Meeting Nr. 1 minutes

Kick-off Meeting

Larnaca (CY) 24-25 October 2011

MINUTES

Monday 24 October 2011, Larnaca (CY), Sun Hall Hotel

The two day Kick-off Meeting took place in the context of the Grundtvig Partnerships Project 2011- 2013, between the following seven associations: PASYKAF (Cyprus), Associazone “Prometeo 2000” (Italy), Eur.adi.po.net (Italy), Insight Social Research Ltd. (UK), PPRE (UK), KDEK (Greece) and OAMGMAMR Dolj (Romania).

PASYKAF is the coordinating institution of the partnership.

In this 1^st meeting, each association was represented by some of its members as listed below:

·         PASYKAF: Nicolas Philippou (General Manager), Spyroula Argyriou (Manager of Limassol District), Panicos Ioannou (Manager of Larnaca District), Maria Michael (Organisational Officer), Andri Avraam (President of Volunteer’s Committee in Paphos), Glafkos Ioannou (Volunteer).

·         Associazone “Prometeo 2000”: Francesco Mangiaracina (President), Leonarda Amella (companion)

·         Eur.adi.po.net: Luigi Cuoghi (Trainer), Ivo Zambello (Trainer), Salvatore Filella (Trainer), Raffaella Mori (Trainer), Gabriella Ferri (Learner), Agnese Antonia Filella (Learner).

·         Insight Social Research Ltd.: Malcolm Fisk (Managing Director), Hayley Fisk (Company Director / Research Associate)

·         PPRE: John Eversley (Managing Director), Belinda Pratten (Associate),

·         KDEK: Periklis Kosmidis (Collaborator), Evangelia Ntani (Employee)

·         OAMGMAMR Dolj: Florin-Viorel Gavrilescu (President), Stefan-Valentin Radu (IT Engineer),.

Meeting Agenda has been provided to all partners in advice and was approved.

*The Agenda is attached

Session 1

During the first session of the meeting which started at 9.30, Mr. Nicolas Philippou, the General Manager of PASYKAF, welcomed the partners that travelled from abroad for the Kick-off Meeting, and then each of the participants introduced themselves.

Afterwards, Mr. Nicolas Philippou made an introductory presentation about PASYKAF and Maria Michael continued by presenting the role of volunteers in the activities of the association.

Then, a representative of every partner, introduced his/hers association and the role of volunteers in their activities followed by a casual conversation about volunteering and a sharing of information drawn from the experience of each association.

Session 2

Mr. Michalis Papatherapontos, coordinator of the project, presented the project tasks and deliverables. The key product will be a Volunteering Framework constituted by the 3 Rs: Recruitment, Retainment and Recognition, while the secondary product will be a web platform.

More specifically regarding task allocations, Eur.adi.po.net, OAMGMAMR Dolj and PPRE will be responsible for the Recruitment, Retainment and Recognition part, respectively. More specifically, they will be responsible for summarising the experience in volunteer management of each association in respect with their country specifics and the Volunteering Framework.

PASYKAF will be in charge for the editing of the final product, while Insight Social Research Ltd. will provide consultation and review. Finaly, the logo and the website of the partnership will be created by Associazone “Prometeo 2000”.

Eur.adi.po.net proposed the development of a partner’s  blog, which will be used as the communication platform of the project. The blog will be developed with the cooperation of Associazone “Prometeo 2000”, so that the blog and website have a common structure. The deadline for the blog and website is the next meeting in Romania, in January 2012.

In the context of the general tasks, all partners are required to collect the evaluation form of the meeting (which takes place in their country) from all participants, prepare a minutes report at the end of every meeting and send it to all partners. Additionally, they should deliver feedback reports from training activities of their volunteers. This can be achieved by developing a questionnaire that volunteers will be asked to fill in at the end of a training activity.

The obligations and deliverables requested from this partnership, as it has already been noted, are a written document (The Volunteering Framework) and e-learning tools (website and blog).

The second half of the second session was carried out mostly by preparing for the next meeting in Romania. The next project meeting will focused on Recruitment. That is, to understand the issues and obstacles that our organizations could face during the recruitment of volunteers. Until the next meeting, the Insight Research Ltd. will prepare a draft questionnaire focused on the three Rs.

The final version of this questionnaire will be filled by volunteers of each organisation as a form of a feedback. Moreover, within a month, all partners must deliver a report on previous experience and feedback derived from the training of volunteers. For this purpose, the organisations from the UK, Insight Social Research Ltd and PPRE will prepare, in cooperation, a template for country report, in order to guide all partners about what to look for and what needs to be included in the report – including common themes among partners, good practices etc. They will also provide a general outlook of existing research and work that has already been done on this field.

Tuesday 25 October 2011, Larnaca (CY), Sun Hall Hotel

Session 3

During the second day of the Kick-off meeting the discussion was dedicated to the probable content and structure of the website. It was suggested that, the link of the project website should appear on the website of each organisation. The website will contain a different section for each of the three Rs, a section for each partner focusing on information about the volunteering framework of each country of base and a links section redirecting to European information about volunteering.

In general, it was agree that it should be a low key website and it will be used as the basic tool on the development of the project and in later stage possible dissemination  activities and outcomes. It will include: what the project is about, who we are (the partners), useful links, possible outcomes and reports, a calendar, news section, and a members only sections where the partners can upload the minutes reports of the meetings and other information.

The blog will also be used for adding to the progress of the project, having the role of a communication platform. Alternatively, instead of creating a blog, a discussion section can be included in the project website using the yahoo group application. The speculation is the publication and dissemination of the final product to take place on a future project. Consequently, the general idea is that this project could be the first step of a bigger project.

Before the end of the meeting, all participants were asked to fill in the evaluation questionnaire.

Next meeting was agreed to take place in Romania in January 2012. The exact date will be decided. In addition, it was decided that new meeting dates will be proposed to all partners in order to have a more evenly distributed meetings calendar.

Prepared by PASYKAF