Laboratories
IVS4Peace Lab I
The #IVS4Peace Laboratory took place in Greece from the 14th to 19th May 2018 hosted by ELIX. Participants from ALLIANCE network, CCIVS, Compagnons Bâtisseurs Belgique (CBB), Concordia, Conservation Volunteers Greece (ELIX), Egyesek Youth Association, Solidarité Jeunesses (SJ), and YEN worked together to identify and upscale the practices and approaches that will be used by different IVS organisations during the workcamps where there will be an impact assessment on volunteers and communities.
The Laboratory aimed at strengthening the participation of young people with fewer opportunities in workcamps and identifying the best tools and practices of social inclusion existing within different networks. They also had discussions to deepen their perception of social inclusion and how the IVS movement can support the social inclusion process, as well as analysed their practices during three main phases of the workcamps (the preparation phase, the workcamp phase, and the follow-up phase). With the ‘snowball’, a non-formal educational method through which each person took a few minutes to think about their perception of social inclusion and discuss it afterwards with different groups, the participants have obtained a better understanding of how institutions define the term ‘social inclusion’ and how they can participate in the decision-making process.
In addition, a photo booth session was organised during which participants could voice their messages.
IVS4Peace Lab II
The IVS4Peace Lab II took place from the 17th to the 22nd March in Brussels. The purpose of the Laboratory was to share a working space about social inclusion practices in workcamps from the perspectives and experiences of the different organisations. and to create a toolkit for Social Inclusion in IVS Projects. It was attended by organizations as Compagnons Bâtisseurs, Alliance of European Voluntary Service Organisations, Solidarités Jeunesses, Youth of European Nationalities (YEN/JEV), Egyesek Youth Organisation and CCIVS. The event was hosted by Compagnons Bâtisseurs and it was framed in the Inclusive Voluntary Service 4 Peace project that we are developing with the support of Erasmus+ KA3.
During the week, the participants were splitted in four groups that corresponded to the four main chronological phases of a workcamp: Outreach, Preparation, During the workcamp and Follow up. Each working group had already existing materials and some tasks to develop. The objective of the Laboratory would be the creation of a toolkit on how to make workcamps more socially inclusive, focusing on a specific target: refugees, migrants, asylum seekers and, minorities even if most of the processes are useful for any specific target within the broader young people with fewer opportunities.
The facilitators of the IVS4Peace Lab II were Clara Giberga, IVS4Peace project facilitator, and Andrés Santiago, Alliance’s Access4All working group coordinator.
Participants from different organisations brought their diverse experience on social inclusion and international volunteering and together with a lot of motivation and commitment; they were working really hard on the elaboration of the basis for what will be one of the main outcomes of the Inclusive Voluntary Service for Peace project. It was really beautiful to see the engagement of the group into looking at the practices, questioning them, finding gaps and thinking of how to improve that, finding links and making them clearer to the process. It was, all in all, a really fruitful and enriching week.
Next steps
After this Lab it is time for the project partnership and the project facilitator to continue the work on the Toolkit so to have a version for testing it during the summer workcamps 2019 within the project partnership. After having tested it during the summer, we will collect feedback for improvement and will work on the next version that will be shared with all IVS organisations and Minority organisations for a final testing during the summer workcamps 2020 and final feedback collection. The final result will be presented at the project final conference in November 2020.