Trainings

Training on Finance

With the postponement due to the pandemic, the training course eventually took place in Hollókő, Hungary between 04 – 10 May 2022, hosted by Egyesek. The training has been designed for those NGO workers/volunteers who deal with finances, but do not have financial professional background.

The objectives of the training course were:

Decreasing the fear surrounding finance management.
Raising consciousness of own competences on finance management.
Learning in which areas to ask for professional help and what are the tasks that can be performed without being a bookkeeper.
Learning about the planning process – plan-do-review cycle and to understand when to act and on what.
Raising understanding of financial management tools; of their usage and meaning.

The training brought together 15 participants from four different continents: Nepal, Togo, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Argentina, Ecuador, France, Indonesia, Japan, South Africa, Germany, Hungary, who share the following profiles:

Finance administrators dealing with finance and administration at their organization: billing, petty cash, bank transfers, keep in touch with bookkeeper
Decision makers deciding about spending of organizational money
Multipliers who have conducted trainings themselves, or sessions or workshops; and have the means and possibilities to conduct further trainings within their organisations

Through the non-formal education methods and workshops, the participants explored and increased their understanding and gained new key skills in various finance topics, including Financial planning, monitoring and controlling, Budgeting, Resource Planning, Income and Expenditure management, Cash management, Cash Flow, Quality Management.

During the evaluation, the participants expressed their satisfaction towards the Training and felt more motivated and empowered to apply the knowledge and skills gained in the daily financial management of their organizations. Furthermore they committed to transfer it to their local stakeholders via the local training hubs they are going to develop. They were eager to explore more the step by step financial planning cycle and more about risk control. This feedback will be useful for the experts to develop the manual on finance.

Team of Trainers

The team of trainers is formed based on the experience of combining non-formal education methodology with the knowledge of the International Voluntary Service movement, its activities, and methods. The team complimented each other by combining their expertise in financial management with their competence in managing the learning process in intercultural groups. The team is composed of two trainers:

KATA SOMLAI: Katalin has long-term experience in finance in the for-profit and non-profit sectors as an economist. She is an expert in leadership, strategy, and Lean business development. Held various finance management positions at multinational companies in Hungary and France and served 2 terms as a member of the International Executive Committee of Service Civil International.

CIHAN KILIC: He has been working as an external educational advisor on behalf of the Council of Europe regarding the development and the implementation of educational activities based on non-formal education methodology. Cihan has also designed and implemented successful youth development projects in Western Africa which are self-sustaining since 2013.

Training on Communication and Marketing

The Training was originally foreseen to take place in April 2022 hosted by NICE Japan. Due to the impact of the COVID-19 on international mobility and public sanitary protocoles, this activity was forced to a postponement and eventually the consortium felt obliged to make the decision to turn the Training into a virtual format in June 2022.

The training was designed for those workers/volunteers who would deal with both communication/marketing and fundraising and want to improve his/her skills combining theoretical sessions with group work as well as a tailored mentorship programme.

Main objectives were:

To be able to autonomously plan, develop and manage a coherent and effective communication strategy;
To establish a plan to increase the visibility and reputation of the organization/IVS movement and to attract new volunteers and activists;
To enhance awareness of the importance of strategic and directed communication to specifics target groups and to discriminate the diverse of channels and communication techniques (both online and offline, also including internal communication);
To learn the basics of fundraising as a tool able to provide a sustainable long-term vision and the organisational sustainability conceived in a holistic view, not just as financial stability;
How to run a successful crowdfunding campaign that can easily capture the attention of a large number of potential donors + the different types of fundraising (in a nutshell)

In addition, a mini MOOC on Communication & Marketing was developed as a pre-training tool for the participants to start getting familiar with the technical terms and feel interested in exploring more around the concepts. The experts’ and the MOOC development team will further work on this MOOC which will include a more complete structure of contents and dynamic activities and can be a supplementary tool for the participants and their local training hub.