The future is Europe: Voluntary service and social change

<< Background >>We applied for this project in 2021 in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic and when European youth work was slowly starting again. Our hope and aim was to reflect about the opportunities present on our continent and inside the member states of the European Union, especially regarding long-term volunteering but also short-term and local volunteering, in order to redefine our vision for voluntary service inside of the network for the next few years. Concentrating on 4 pillars (digitalisation, solidarity, employment, sustainability), we reflected on how volunteering was impacting them but also on how they were impacting volunteering, we rose the awareness of these topics by our participants, shared input and knowledge and realise intercultural differences on these topics but also similarities. Although not specifically a topic of one of our in-person seminars, reflecting on our common European citizenship, what it means, what it entails and how present it can be in our life was transcendent to the project and helped forge closer ties between all of us.All of this combined and the knowledge of each partner increased the expertise both of the network and partners but also the expertise and knowledge of the participants.<< Objectives >>We wanted to redefine our vision for voluntary service for the next few years and set goals to help us develop concrete actions in this field. We also wanted to raise awareness among young people on the importance of citizenship, civic engagement and common values while promoting their soft skills, competences and employability. The four seminars as well as the fact that most of the participants attended between 2 and all 4 seminars were intended as it could provide more possibilities for intercultural understanding and learning between young people and have them explore their European identity, while also creating transnational friendships and giving them the possibility to imagine possible future partnerships together.<< Implementation >>During the duration of this project, we have organised 4 in-person seminars with online preparation meetings and follow-up meetings. Each seminar had a particular focus: the first two in 2022 were digitalisation and solidarity and took place in Germany and in Belgium, the last two in 2023 were employment and sustainability in Spain and in Italy. The preparation meetings online aimed to give a first introduction to the topic and to how the seminar will take place but also to start breaking the ice between the participants. It generally took place in the two weeks before the seminar. The follow-up meetings took place in the two weeks after the seminar and aimed to have the participants reflect on their experience and work on the outcomes of the seminar or on the projects they started creating.During the project duration (and later), the partners also met online regularly to discuss and work on the project but also give themselves updates on volunteering opportunities in their organisations.<< Results >>The concrete outcomes of this project was the review on our policy paper on volunteering as well as working closer together between partners. This has been seen in the current and future project applications from and between our project partners. The work on the policy paper has also helped all organisations to reflect on their volunteers and volunteering work, while also shining a different light on it through the sustainability, solidarity, competences recognition and digitalisation lenses.The closeness and regularity in working together has also helped the network to restart the European youth work activities and international activities and training course and to be back to a pre-pandemic level in the amount of participants reached and the number of activities implemented. This has also given us the opportunity to get to know each other better as organisations and to know more about the activities and partnerships implemented locally.Throughout the duration of the project, the participants have also gotten closer and have worked on ideas they can implement locally or internationally in the future.