I am sooooooooooo IN!!!

Hi Giouli,

It's great to have you back. I have missed your presence in Athens and then Portugal, but I am really happy that you are back. I hope you will find the sun and the sea ... inspirational!

I am glad that we could benefit from your experience at EU. :) related to this project.

I am definetely in!!!

It is a great project and it is worth a shot!
Please tell me what you would need from our part.

Kisses,

camelia / romania

Hello to all again

Dear All,

i have seen your complaints all this period. without trying to excuse my self i have to tell you the following :

1. As representative of HAID i'm national coordinator of the Greek Coalition against Poverty (see www.stoppoverty.gr) and that takes a lot from our energy.

2. Additionally to that from May i'm member representing Europe in the International facilitation team of GCAP global (see www.whiteband.org) that makes me travel and work a lot

3. Our HAID's old but new member that some of you know from Egypt in 2004 Giouli Sofou is back and will manage all the application proceedures untill the 30th of June that we have to submit our project. Please follow her instructions as Giouli came from Brussels that she was evaluator in Youth Projeccts for 6 months.

4. Her email is giouli103@yahoo.com and she is more than ready to make our project reality.

5. I'm always here and having my attention to our beautifull coolturizmo project.

My answers to all complaints

Dear all (and especially Marco),

our project is still as it was during our last communication. We will apply under the Innovative Actions of Youth program. Deadline as it was announced is June 28th 2006. Means we still have 3 months to collect all papers. Apart of that partners that are applying as hosting organizations must continue their proceedures.

Additionally we have the support of Greek national agency and probably (and most possible) we will have co-financing. So we are continuing as it was presented in Castello Branco. HAID will lead the consortium and will apply. For the rest of management details you will see the rest part of application (first part is already done).

Also i have some complaints. I'm speaking regurarly with camelia, marco, cyprus(maria), we have also reactions from Poland and Belgium andBulgaria, but no news from Roberto and Malta. In my recent visit in Portugal i have met also other partners in Lisbon and i have given them phone numbers and details of Roberto to see ways to cooperate in this project. I think they could give an added value to our project. For Malta i dont have any comment. we are still progressing ahead and i think our project is ready to move.

So lets be patient untill our submission in June.

Sotiris

My answers

First of all,
i would like to say that our project will be submitted when all of our hosting organizations are having accreditation. sending organizations dont need that.

yes we will submit first as a separate part the mentors training, but as Camelia is pointing out we have to cooperate with Salto's trainers as well.

Now if we have other opinions lets vote.
Post your vote untill 1st of February.

we are voting between the following proposals :

1. We are submitting separately the training of mentors part
2. We are submitting the project as it was written 1st of April (when every hosting organization will be accredited)
3. We are submitting only a network proposal in our national agency in Greece (co-financing up to 25000 and 50% of budget).

Waiting for your votes

Sotiris

project

So what are we going to do in the end Sotiris?

Do you all think it would be a good idea to split the project in two? To use the first part in order to create the relevant methodology and at the same time all of us to get accredited as host organization? And to keep the next round of call for proposals in order to start actually the exchanges?

what do you think?

I am the opinion that this project is both solid and innovative. It is also good that we can have feedback from Bruxelles or the national agencies before starting writing all that amount of papers.

Are there any other options available to us?

camelia

Good news and bad news

Dear all,

for having our project as large scale EVS must all of the hosting organizations have an approved Hosting Organization Expression of Interest (HEI). Due to time limit i dont think is possible for Camelia, Tortona and Ghent to have it. If you think otherwise tell me about it.... for that reason are sollutions are :

1. we are submitting as we have planned our HEIs and till their approval we will not apply but we could actch the deadline of 1st of April or 1st of June. Also we have to re- arrange the hosting plan in order to pass a general rule that no more than 4 volunteers per hosting organization that is put in new compendium. That means practically that we must have all 4 hosting organizations, hosting at the same time. example : First round - Volunteers from BG, B, I, GR, PL, RO, P willl be distributed like the following :

BG- 2 volunteers goes 1 to Italy, 1 to Greece
Belgium - 2 volunteers 1 go to Romania, 1 to Italy
Romania - 2 volunteers 1 go to Belgium, 1 goes to Portugal
Italy - 2 volunteers 1 go to Greece, 1 go to Romania
Greece - 3 volunteers go to 1 to Italy, 1 to Portugal, 1 Belgium
Poland - 2 volunteers go 1 to Portugal and 1 in Greece
Portugal - 2 volunteers 1 go to Romania and 1 to Belgium

totals for hosting :

Greece - 3
Romania- 3
Italy- 3
Portugal- 3
Belgium -3

2. Now for all the above reasons we could follow the following proccedure :

to split our project in two :

1. To apply for mentoring preparation and the selection methods of special target groups under the innovative actions of 5. In the way we could have the mentoring training for the support of the future implementation. At the same time we will have the sending organizations trained and prepared for approaching the groups we would like to have.

2. Asap we will finish our HEI proceedure all of us we could apply for the volunteer periods.

I think we will be moe secure for the result in that way and we could keep things runing till to finish our bureaucratic period.

Answer asap.

Sotiris

A notification

marco is better not to write upon each others articles because people are not receiving notifications of what is written. Also tell me if you are receiving email with every new post.

Skype

I'm advising you all to download www.skype.org

for the time being me, Magda , lara we are connected. waiting also all of you there. You will find me as sotiris.koukios. Lets start using some tools already.

Also you could add me as mihalis60@hotmail.com in your msn messenger
greek336 in yahoo messenger

sotiris

Where we are all?

Dear friends,

i would like to receive comments from all of you. I didnt hear anything from Roberto, Farid, Malta, Bulgaria. Please could we conclude the discussion asap to start defining budget which is for all of us very important.

my comments on the project

Hi all,

First of all, congratulations Sotiris... good work as regards the proposal and the logo!

Second, here are the answers on the questions you have asked in the email, especially that some of them concern the hosting organizations:

How you will create your local lab
In Romania, we will split the one month period in 2 parts:

first and second week, the volunteers will be based in the county capital (Bistrita) for the language and IT training - we can secure a free room for training and access to a PC network within a youth center as the one you have seen in Castelo Branco.

for the last 2 weeks, the young people will be hosted in a spa resort - Sangeorz Bai - where we have really good relations with the local authorities and in this way we can have some expenses covered.

The local lab will be in this case an internet cafe. The young people will use a camera belonging to our organization, easy to use and to handle. They will have to organize themselves in such a way that they will be able to use it according to a certain agree schedule.

2. what contacts you will make as sending or hosting organizations

As a hosting organization in the fist phase, for us it is important to have agreements with all local parties which could cover some of the costs or help us in any way with access to internet and a training venue. As I have mentioned above, we think we have found the right solutions for that.

3. What would you like more by coordination

As regards the proposal and in the light of the discussions we had in Athens and Castelo Branco, HAID should submit the proposal and have the right to sign all papers with the EU.
As regards the coordination of the network, we should have that coordination committe where all partner organization should have a representative (with the only mention that such representative should be a decision-maker). I think that all volunteers who are participating in the project should have the right to post and make comments on this blog. As regards their participation in the evaluation of the activity, I don't understand why Sotiris suggested the number of 3, but I am sure that in case any of the volunteers will want to be part of the discussion, there will be nobody there to stop him/her to add his/her comments.

4. do you have other ideas about on arrival training

I have seen what is suggested about on arrival training and it looks feasible to me. It would be good if all sending organization will present to the volunteers such schedule in advance - so they will not raise different expectations. I would stress the language training and IT training - i.e. how to overcome the technofobia of the volunteers - as Sotiris has pointed out very well in the proposal.

5. Do you have questions about mentoring;

the selection of the mentors is the key for the succes of the project. their preparation has to include a short demonstration and a short training - maybe not more than 2 hours - on what is expected from volunteers in terms of using the wikipedia and uploading materials. Maybe not all mentors are familiar with this. So I would suggest that in the mentor training should be added an extra 2 hour preparation for the aspects mentioned above.

One general comment:
The proposal is very innovative, and this is a plus we have in front of EU. It will require a lot of work and dedication from both hosting and sending organization, but the good preparation of hosts, local authorities and local communities is the real issue which will make a success out of our project.

I will post soon, some of the selection tools we have used in our former projects and some relevant resources you should read and which will be usefull in your preparation for this project.

Camelia - Romania

A big mistake

Yes i agree that i have made a mistake that Poland also said yes and i have excluded them. excuse me because my notes from Portugal were mentioning 6 mentors. So all calculations were according to that. But now that you are seeing the project written and for completing other details that we need i need a final answer by all of you.

Sotiris

Our logo

Dear all

I have send to all of you the project proposal form. Please read it carefully and send comments untill FRIDAY. Urgent Urgent Urgent!!!!!

After that i will start budget and next week we will finish.

Happy New Year and answers

Dear all,

i have finished the first part of the application. I will post it but is too big and needs a reading by all of you and to make corrections.

We are following our plan as we have agreed in Portugal. No changes so far.

Sotiris