On November 8, the Fundació Catalunya Voluntària traveled to Madrid to participate in one of the days of the international activity ‘Visit and exchange of good practices with CEMEA’, hosted by the Coordinadora del Tiempo Libre Infantil y Juvenil de Vallecas, in the Luz Vallecas Centre, together with managers of other 2 FCV’s partner NGOs, coming from Málaga and Zaragoza, being 4 out of 5 of the SCE’ Promoter team.
The activity allowed us to meet a group of trainers, managers, and monitors from the French NGO CEMEA, coming from 4 regions: Ile de France, Normandy, Pays de Loire, and Borgogne. The first dynamic served to learn about the organization, its objectives, programs, profile of the CEMEA’s staff (trainers, managers, leaders, and coordinators), as well as the training system they use, officially recognized in France, in the fields of education, animation, management and coordination of free time educational activities. Next, the 3 invited NGOs introduce us, starting with the host and director of the Coordinadora de Vallecas, followed by the representatives of Centro Europa Joven of Madrid, Asociación Mundus, FCV and Fundación Arrabal.
In the next round, the group of 20 people was divided into 3 focused-topic on sharing information about international volunteering programs (ESC), vocational training (VET), and youth exchanges (KA1), in which we shared information about needs and expectations, on the one hand, and capabilities and offers, on the other, practical information to identify opportunities for collaboration. The exchange with the CEMEA group, despite its brevity, was very useful for creating new links between organizations.
The last activity was a meeting of the SCE Promoter team, after 1 year and a half of holding online meetings, to advance the preparations for the training activity that the group will organize in Vilanova i la Geltrú (Barcelona) in October 2024 within the framework of the training strategy of the Spanish national agency. We aim to create a new program, which will benefit thousands of young people and NGOs by generating new opportunities for community service, solidarity, lifelong learning, and social inclusion, at the local, interregional, and international level.
At the FCV, we are happy to have traveled more than 1000 KM by train to participate in this meeting, which, we trust, will help us promote new learning activities in the field of intercultural education, from which educators, trainers, and managers from CEMEA and Catalan non-profit organizations will benefit.
For more information about training and internship opportunities in other countries, you can send an email to projectes@catalunyavoluntaria.cat or consult the ‘opportunities’ section on this website.