We have started a new Erasmus+ project – EduVol – Volunteering as an Educational Opportunity, coordinated by PDCO: Platforma dobrovolnickych centier a organizacii (Slovakia) within a strong partnership with Önkéntes Központ Alapítvány (Hungary), Udruga za razvoj civilnog drustva SMART (Croatia) and SCW: Stowarzyszenie Centrum Wolontariatu (Poland).
Our objectives are:
• to enhance the competencies and opportunities of youth to fully participate in its society (local, regional, country and EU level), both economically and socially.
• to motivate young people to engage and
• to enable youth workers to develop key competences, sense of initiative and civic participation through one of successful strategies wide spread in the world, service-learning.
• to improve the quality and relevance of the education offer in the field of implementation of the service-learning strategy in youth work through development of a training curriculum and related documents and manuals adapted to the context of Central and Eastern European countries;
• to enhance capacities of organizations and youth workers in implementing service-learning concept in practice and possibilities of its implementation in cooperation with local as well as international youth volunteers;
• to increase the quality of youth work primary in area of youth volunteering.
Our proposed method: Service Learning
Service–learning is a teaching-learning methodology that generates meaningful learning, allows problem-based learning, offers concrete solutions and optimizes the development of knowledge, competencies and attitudes by motivating students to investigate and be involved with the social context with a solidarity approach (PASO JOVEN, 2004; Tapia, 2006).
The main results:
• Training for youth workers in service-learning and handbook for trainers
• Manual for youth workers on how to implement Service Learning in their work and good practice examples
• Manual for youth on how develop Service Learning project
• Webinar – a graphically facilitated introduction in Service Learning Interactive video about service-learning.
The project is funded by the European Commission through the Erasmus+ programme, key action 2, Strategic Partnerships.