AVSO Partnership Building seminar

The generades Youth Group from Malta has established new contacts and partners from EU and Mediterranean countries after attending a seminar to motivate new long- and short-term projects in Istanbul last month.

The Association of Voluntary Service Organisations' (AVSO) Partnership Building seminar discussed ways of increasing volunteers and their motivation as well as the European Voluntary Service (EVS).

EVS is part of a European Union Youth Programme that promotes the mobility of young people through international activities with an informal education dimension such as youth exchanges and initiatives, voluntary services and training of youth workers.

It creates an opportunity for young people to get actively involved in European project work - giving project volunteers an intercultural experience and building on a trans-national partnership between youth organisations.

Activities must be connected to the theme of the environment, art and culture, activities with children, young people or the elderly, heritage, sports and leisure or civil protection. Participants must be aged between 18 and 25 and willing to take up projects between three weeks and 12 months long.

Each organisation that attended the seminar had to put up two different stands to attract new partners and contacts. One to promote their own country by distributing brochures, serving traditional food and playing traditional music, and another to promote the organisation by introducing it in the most attractive way, distributing souvenirs, brochures and more. The idea was to attract other organisations to partner with the group represented by the stand.

Each seminar participant also had the opportunity to take part in one of several workshops on topics including EVS basic training, fundraising and co-financing activities, finding and preparing hosting projects, the myths and realities of the Mediterranean, managing and motivating volunteers and working with disadvantaged volunteers.

The seminar's guest speaker was Ercan Tutal, who manages a Turkish organisation called Alternative Camp. Last November this organisation won the Social Responsibility World Award in Sofia.

Alternative Camp is an enterprise formed completely by volunteers to create an infrastructure of sports, education, holiday and integration for the disabled and people with special needs.

It aims to create a state of social awareness in society by supporting the participation of the groups in their social life and by building bridges between various disabled groups, ages, sexes, cultures and languages.

AVSO's mission is to promote long-term voluntary service opportunities. To achieve this goal, AVSO lobby for a legal status for volunteers and work to broaden participation in voluntary service of new organisations in the non-profit sector and of individuals who do not have access to volunteer opportunities.