STEP Training in Europe

The fourth and last training of the STEP project took place in the Republic of North Macedonia from the 26^th to the 31^st of February 2018. This training was hosted by the CCIVS member organisation CID: Center for Intercultural Dialogue and welcomed participants from European organisations.

The participants were from 6 different organisations from Europe:

Concordia (FRANCE)
Egyesek (HUNGARY)
SCI Hellas (GREECE)
Solidarités Jeunesses (FRANCE)
SCI (CATALUNYA)
CID (MACEDONIA)

This training aimed to work on organisational management through a process of analysis and impact measurement. Using the experience of the participants and the two trainers (Matina Delgado and Oriol Josa), the group went through different steps in order to analyse the main topics related to the management of IVS organisations.

These main topics were identified thanks to the model of the pentagon which was created in Latin America and finally developed by CCIVS in order to foresee the IVS organisations empowerment through the analysis of 5 main dimensions: structure, functioning, communication, relationships and financial sustainability.

The training was organised in a way that every topic had at least one dedicated session in order to reflect on the challenges faced by each organisation and try to find common solutions for these issues. More than just theoretical sessions, these 4 days of training included practical and analytical sessions and encouraged the participants to share their experiences and best practices.

Each topic was divided in two main phases, the first one was aiming to identify the challenges and reflect on the current situation; meanwhile the second one was about sharing in plenary session the different elements identified previously and work on common solutions that can help to tackle the issues.

This training about organisational managements has per aim to create a new training course programme about empowering IVS organisations through the different dimensions already mentioned above.

Something that we should keep in mind is that no organisation can be sustainable in a long-term strategy if there is no balance between the 5 dimensions of the pentagon. It is a must that we insure the use of good practices in each dimension in order to be able to keep a sustainable organisational management system.

The end of the training was dedicated to the impact measurement and aimed to prepare the participants to the field visits that were organised in cooperation with the 5 different organisations that attended this training. This last phase was the occasion to show the first results obtained after the three first STEPs training in Africa (Ghana), Asia (Cambodia) and Latin America (Costa Rica). This impact measurement takes place for few years now and is reinforced all along thanks to the collaboration between IVS organisations and networks, universities and trainers.

The field visits following the training were the very last days of practical analysis for this STEP project. It is time now to gather all the information collected in the different continents and analyse these datas that will be presented in the last meeting of the project, next April.

This last training was a successful and enriching meeting for all the participants and brought European organisations to talk together about issues that are most of the time common, even though each IVS organisation faces specific problems that depend on their own situation and context.