Training Courses and Seminars

The European Voluntary Service, a great opportunity for participation

European Voluntary Service Training Course, Predeal, 3-7 february 2010
European Voluntary Service Training Course, Predeal, 3-7 february 2010

Last week, I attended a training course about the opportunities offered by the European Voluntary Service (EVS). The European Commission allows organizations to host volunteers from other countries in a learning program of up to one year. The themes are numerous and community development is one of them.

The EVS offers great perspectives for SMART Development Centre, as it may engage European volunteers in thematic citizen engagement projects, using the European participation platform at www.public-policies.eu and the Romanian participation one at www.politicipublice.ro. Besides the pretty big complexity of the Program, volunteers could bring great value to our future participation endeavors. In addition, they could develop their community engagement skills, so this experience would definitely be a two-way learning process.

Any Romanian host organization receives a lump sum of eur420 per volunteer per month, to cover administrative costs as well as food and accommodation for the volunteer. This is pretty decent given that the amount is higher than the average sallary in Romania.

I will write again about our future EVS program once SMART Development Centre is accredited as a host and coordinating organization. Congrats to the organizers, the Romanian National Agency for the Youth in Action Program and the facilitators (also because I had 20 minutes to present SMART Method of Public Policy 🙂 ).  More details at www.anpcdefp.ro.