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ESN Portugal National Capacity Building Plan 2021

We have the ambition to promote knowledge transfer and competency development, to provide volunteers with new tools, to ensure that all the positions in ESN Portugal are guaranteed and to certify that the volunteers have all the power to support national and international students, and to feel confident in their developed work.

Federação Erasmus Student Network Portugal

Project description

This project aimed to reduce the impact that the volunteer turnover has in the quality and longevity of ESN Portugal’s work and organisational well-being. To do that, we planned a project with diverse capacity building activities, addressed to the volunteers of ESN Portugal. With that, we promoted knowledge transfer and competency development, to provide volunteers with new tools, to ensure that all the positions in ESN Portugal are guaranteed and to certify that the volunteers have all the power to support national and international students, and to feel confident in their developed work. To be effective, the project was planned according to the “level of development” of the volunteers and their needs, so the different activities had different target groups and topics of work. After this capacity building, we can now ensure the sustainability of the national network across its local associations. The plan included a set of activities that allowed us to achieve and execute the ESN Portugal National Capacity Building Plan 2021: Preparation Activities; Local Board's Meeting; ESNupgrade; ESNLevelUp; National Strategy Meeting; ESN Live Session; Report. Through this programme of activities, ESN Portugal’s volunteers are empowered with better competencies, tools and learning, which enable them to improve their work with youngsters. At the same time, it allows volunteers to be empowered with competencies that are essential for their future, personally and professionally, encouraging their active citizenship, inclusion and diversity.

Project implementation and expected outcome

To implement the programme of activities, we count with the following team: National Training Team, Internal and External Trainers and Organising Committee. In total, we have 189 people involved in the project (volunteers, team, partners, stakeholders and community). We also add monitoring and evaluation activities to ensure the success of the project, the adjustment of the contents and the response to the identified needs. To ensure monitoring and evaluation, some tools were applied, such as feedbacks, questionnaires, reports, etc. In terms of divulgation and dissemination activities we have done regular activities to divulge the project and the ESAA, in order to make them known and to captivate the interest about it, its opportunities, and its impact. After the implementation of the activities, the results achieved will be disseminated, and a final document with the materialised programme of activities (output) will be made available. With this project we address directly the Cluster 4 – Capacity Building: it is an opportunity to increase the skills of ESN Portugal volunteers, either at the level of management and leadership or at the level of the implementation of projects on the ground. By empowering the volunteers, we will give them the necessary tools to improve their work with young international students and to encourage other national students to get involved in international mobility opportunities, as well as to support them in this process. This will be done particularly through capacity building sessions and through the exchange of experiences, practices, shares and information between entities active in the youth field and stakeholders, designed according to the needs of target volunteers. Through this capacity building of ESN Portugal volunteers, we contributed indirectly to other clusters and components, such as: Cluster 1, by empowering volunteers we will be giving them more and better tools that will have an impact on their future, namely in terms of employment; Cluster 2, by empowering volunteers for the Erasmus+ Programme and other mobility and volunteering opportunities, we ensure that they will have the necessary learning and developed competencies to encourage other national youngsters to participate in these opportunities and to more effectively support international youth; Cluster 3, empowering volunteers with values such as diversity, multiculturalism, tolerance and internationalisation.

Federação Erasmus Student Network Portugal

03.03.2022

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