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e-VOC

The e-VOC project aimed at improving the offer, accessibility and quality of training for Volunteer Coordinators on the validation of competences. To do so, four organisations from four European countries joined forces to develop the first open and multilingual online training course for Volunteer Coordinators on the validation of competences.

The delegates used this project meeting to evaluate the training content developed so far by each partner organisation and sharing feedback and advice to help each other.

The next step will be to finalise the development of the online training content and to test it with Volunteer Coordinators from Spain and Italy.

The results from the testing will be presented during the next project meeting, in Rome (Italy), planned for January 2018.

This project, co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union, is a joint initiative of: the Spanish Volunteering Platform (Spain), CSVnet (Italy), EDOS Foundation (Netherlands), and University of Galway (Ireland).

For further information, please visit our website: www.e-voc.eu

Tawasol

In 2009, the Community Knowledge Initiative at University of Galway entered into a nine partner university collaboration to embed civic engagement and service learning in universities in Jordan and Lebanon. This partnership, entitled Tawasol Project has been funded by the European Union Tempus IV programme. The final Tawasol Project Report demonstrated the growth and expansion of civic engagement and service learning within five universities in Jordan and Lebanon.

The ultimate goals of the Tawasol Project is to give university students an experience within community that facilitates them to become engaged and active democratic citizens, to forge links between universities and community in the Arab World and to transform the curriculum.

The Tawasol Project, Tawasol means engagement and interaction in Arabic, is in its final year of funding and can boast of many significant achievements, including the establishment and growth of service learning within the curriculum and the development of centres for civic engagement and service learning in the partner universities.

Staff and students of University of Galway have travelled extensively through Jordan and Lebanon offering training and experiences of civic engagement in Ireland. Students and staff from each of the partner universities have shared their contextual and cultural experiences of civic engagement and service learning.

At the outset of the project, in 2009, University of Galway hosted 40 academic staff from Jordan and Lebanon on a study tour that enabled the development of a number of service learning modules that were subsequently piloted and embedded.

In 2012, over 30 students from Jordan, Lebanon, Bulgaria, Sweden, Spain, England and Ireland attended a two week Tawasol Intenational Student Exchange faciliated by the CKI at University of Galway. As part of this exchange students embedded academic learning within a community context, working with over 20 local Galway based community and voluntary organisations.

University of Galway and Volvo Ocean Race Partnership

In 2009 and 2012, University of Galway became the offical Education Partners of the Volvo Ocean Race which is a premier world-wide sporting event. The race finale in Galway involved hundreds of student volunteers through the ALIVE Programme. The Volvo Ocean Race is the world's premier yacht race for professional racing crews. The 2012 race marked the 11th running of this ocean marathon series since it began life in 1973 as the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race and is one of the world's toughest sporting events. 650,000 people visited the Race Village during the Galway stopover in 2009 of the Volvo Ocean Race. 10,000 people lined the harbour walls at 3am on the morning of 24th May 2009 to welcome the Volvo Ocean Race fleet into Ireland, culminating in record crowds of almost 200,000 for the In Port and Pro Am Race. The Volvo Ocean Race 2012 fleet arrived from Lorient to Galway to the biggest festival in Ireland, that embraced all cultures from each of the race stopovers. In 2012, the Volvo Ocean Race Grand Finale was an eight day festival of marine, sport, culture and arts, entertainment and food. University of Galway student volunteers were key to the success of the Galway Volvo events and became the ‘face' of the event to visitors at the Race Village.