Dear friends,
the European Volunteer Centre (CEV) is a European network of currently 54 volunteer national and regional development agencies and volunteer centres in 24 European countries representing thousands of volunteers at the local level. CEV channels the collective priorities and concerns of its member organisations to the institutions of the European Union. It also acts as a central forum for the exchange of policy, practice and information on volunteerism. It supports networking among its members and organizes conferences, seminars, workshops and other activities such as research.
CEV is currently developing together with the Southern and Eastern Europe Youth Network (SEEYN) a follow-up project to our YOU::VOL initiative (http://www.cev.be/YOUVOL.htm), a seminar organized in the framework of the EU YOUTH Programme, in March this year in Skopje, Macedonia, focusing on youth volunteering policies in Europe. We would like briefly to share our project idea with all of you and see whether you are interested to be a participants or project partner and provide input to the preparation. As shown in different conflict regions in Europe (and elsewhere in the world), volunteering plays an important societal role in conflict resolution and peace building, as it contributes to (re-)building bonds of trust, mutual understanding and social cohesion in (post-)conflict societies. CEV would like to raise awareness on this topic and give it a higher profile within different stakeholders: volunteer organisations, national policy makers, EU policy makers and donors.
To attain this objective, CEV is planning to apply to the EU Youth Programme Action 3.1. for an event similar to the concept of the YOU::VOL seminar:
A 4-5 days seminar showcasing good practice examples of youth volunteering projects in solving societal conflicts and building peace. The examples presented and discussed will lead to recommendations towards policy makers and donors on how to tap into the potential of volunteering when designing policies in conflict or post-conflict regions. We would be focusing of the Balkan region and on other regions with interesting projects related to conflict such as Northern Ireland and Cyprus. The seminar is likely to take place in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina on the kind invitation of SEEYN.
Partner organizations in the project should be volunteer organizations and / or peace organizations with experience in the solving conflicts through volunteering. They are expected to contribute to the project in the following areas:
- Identifying good practices / projects / initiatives on volunteering and conflict resolution / peace building;
- Contributing with ideas and design through delivering workshop for the conference/seminar;
- Identifying relevant government and donor stakeholders from their own countries to be invited to the conference;
- Providing space for the outcome document on their own website / contribute to dissemination of results.
Deadline for submission of the project proposal is 1st September 2007. The EU grant applied for will reimburse for 70% of participants' travel costs and the subsistence costs. There will be a participation fee of around 50-75 EUR.
We will distribute a detailed project description in the second week of August. In the meantime:
- Please let us know if your organization is interested in participating as a partner in this project
- Let us know if you know about other organisations that might interested to participate in such project.
- Let us know about concrete good practices/projects of youth volunteering in conflict resolution and peace buliding that your organisation might have and that we can include as preliminary examples in the project application.
We are very much looking forward to your reactions, we would apreciate to hear back ASAP to assistant@cev.be, so that we can move forward with developing the project.
For those already interested to join the project, we enclose the Partnership agreement (Part III) is attached. Please fill it in and send it to CEV by fax and original document by post / traditional mail.
Best wishes
Branka Cicak
Policy and Networking Assistant
European Volunteer Centre, CEV
Rue de la Science 10
B-1000 Brussels
Tel: +32 2 511 75 01
Fax: +32 2 514 59 89
assistant@cev.be
www.cev.be
Skype: cev-europeanvolunteercentre
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