EFIL’s Advocacy coordinator Elisa Briga attended the Expert group meeting convened by the European Platform for Learning Mobility – coordinated by the EU-CoE youth partnership – to provide feedback to a draft Charter on Quality Learning Mobility in the field of youth.
The meeting took place in Tiblisi, Georgia, on 16-17 June and convened 18 experts among researchers and practitioners. The drafting process is coordinated by Soren Kristiensen who is also Editor of the book on Learning Mobility and Social inclusion to be published soon. The expert group discussed the key aspects of quality which need to be considered before, during and after mobility, as well as organisational aspects that have a key role in the process.
The Charter includes some 20 general principles that can be applied to a wide range of mobility formats in the youth field, namely volunteering abroad, multilateral exchanges, pupil exchanges run by non-formal education organisations. However, the Charter has potential to be adapted also to other types of mobilities concerning youth but run within formal education (VET, Erasmus).
The Charter is not meant to be binding for organisations running youth mobility programmes, its purpose is to be a guideline/awareness raising tool which enables every organisation to run quality mobility programmes. The Charter could be complemented at a later stage by a handbook for each type of mobility in order to tackle aspctes of quality that cannot be covered by general principles.
Three of the experts attending the meeting are also members of the Competences for Democratic Culture (CDC) ad hoc expert group, therefore there was the to make meaningful links between CDC and the quality framework. In particular, the conclusion was that a successful mobility experience develops competences for democratic culture (CDC) and at the same time young people who have developed CDC are more likely to have a successful mobility experience.
As EFIL we provided expertise related to learning mobility of minors, and focused on the importance of training of youth workers for adequate support to the learner and risk management. We also underlined the important of reasons why learning mobility is so important, such as intercultural learning and active citizenship – both promoted within CDC.
The charter edited on the basis of the input provided has been presented at the EPLM Steering Group meeting at the end of June. We hope that the Charter will be released in autumn 2018 at the next EPLM Conference to take place in Paris, and that it will mark an important milestone for the promotion of quality youth mobility.
For more information: elisa.briga@afs.org