Would you like to realise your own ideas?
Have you been wanting to initiate your own project?
You (and eventually your team) are ready to rock, but you just don’t know yet how to get there and realise your idea(s)?
Well… read this call carefully and – if interested – join us!

Aims and Goals

• Exchange with international youth workers, activists and volunteers about pressing topics in Europe that urgently need more attention, e.g. forced migration and refugees or social exclusion
• Exploring Social Entrepreneurship as a tool for social change and just society
• Learn from each other how to improve the processes of planning, preparing and implementing projects to tackle these topics
• Develop ideas into concrete project concepts while learning from existing local and international projects, best practices and from the field of NGOs and Social Entrepreneurs
• Build a support network to find synergies among project teams and to build on knowledge existing in networks and organisations
• Use project management tools to develop, plan, implement, monitor and evaluate projects’ impacts.

The seminar will gather 30 participants from about 17 countries. The final selection of the participants will be done by the coordination team upon recommendation by the project partners.

Participants

• Be able to attend for the full duration of the seminar
• Ideally be active and be able to influence decisions of their sending organisations and have experience in volunteering, and related topics, such as Climate Justice, Gender, Social Inclusion, Human Rights, Community Development…
• Be willing to commit yourself to spreading their new skills and competences to your sending branch in whatever capacity
• We expect participants to actively contribute to this outcome after the Activity by writing short reports about their learnings and activities, and to share them with SCI-D, CVS and their sending organisation
• Bring ideas for workshops, methods, tools, best practices and approaches to be shared
• Be 18 years old or older
• Be able to work in English language
• Be motivated and sensitive to work with people from different backgrounds
  

This call for participants applies only for youth workers, activists and volunteers from EU countries + Albania, Armenia, Kosovo and Ukraine. You can apply if you have a residence in one of those countries or hold a passport from one of them.

The venue

The training will take place in Hotel Complex Jeravna, which is situated in Bankya (Bulgarian: Банкя) – a small town and hot springs spa district located on the outskirts of Sofia. The district is famous for its healing and clean air and mineral springs and baths that have been used for medicinal purposes for hundreds of years.

The accommodation will be organised in double or triple rooms, which have a private bathroom, bed linens and towels, and free WiFi. Breakfast, lunch and dinner will be provided in the restaurant of the hotel, according to the specific food needs of the participants mentioned in the registration form, starting with a dinner on 30th June and finishing with lunch on 5th July 2022.

Trainers

More information about the trainers, draft program, conditions and project you can find in the detailed call here.

Application

To apply for the project, please follow the link

Please submit your application by 03.06.2022! We will be happy to answer all your questions, please write to Britta and Jenia at: projectcafe@sci-d.de

Are you planning an anti-racism action, and are you looking for funds? XminY may be able to help! Read on to find out how.

What is XminY

XminY supports social movements, action groups and changemakers fighting for a fair, democratic, sustainable and accepting world.

XminY is a unique worldwide action fund that has been supporting social movements for more than 45 years. XminY is supported by a few thousand individuals in the Netherlands who donate to the fund. This ensures our independence and freedom to determine our own political position and strategy.

Firestarters

XminY believes in the power of people to shape their world. Every great social transformation starts with brave individuals who take the first steps along the road to change. These are ordinary people who stand up in their communities, encourage others, and work together with them in the struggle for a fair, just, sustainable and accepting world.

Bottom-up change
XminY believes that problems can best be approached from the bottom up. Local activists and grassroots organisations know best what is the most effective way to realize their goals and how to give a voice to those who are unheard. XminY is proud to support these changemakers in their struggles.

Grassroots groups
XminY primarily supports groups that are new, small or controversial. Often, they do not receive support from bigger donors or governments; they do not meet donor requirements, of their questioning of established interests makes them contentious in their own regions. The projects XminY supports stand out because of their critique of the current economic and governance systems, and their dedication to putting people and planet before profit.

What we support
XminY supports demonstrations, occupations, direct action and other creative ways to change the world. XminY supports projects within the following categories: ecology, living and land rights, emancipation, media and democracy, peace and human rights, refugees and anti-racism, work and globalisation. We fund individual projects with a maximum grant of €3000, and the budget for the entire project cannot exceed €20.000. 

How to apply

Applications can be submitted by using the forms on our website. Please read our general criteria (below) and the costs we cover carefully before submitting your application. It would be a waste of your time if you put a lot of effort in an application that doesn’t match our criteria! We ask you to provide background information, concrete data, your planned activities and a detailed budget. There is no deadline for sending your application to XminY. But please keep in mind the decision making process can take up to two months, so apply on time!

Apply for funding

Dutch https://xminy.nl/aanvraag/

English https://xminy.nl/english/

Spanish https://xminy.nl/espanol/

French https://xminy.nl/francais/

Russian https://xminy.nl/pyccknn/

Arab https://xminy.nl/arab/

General criteria

• XminY only supports groups, organizations or social movements that fight for an honest, just and ecologically sound society.
• XminY only supports projects that aim to mobilize and inspire individuals and groups.
• XminY only supports projects that go beyond specific individual or ethnic interests.
• XminY prefers to support demonstrations, blockades, occupations, direct actions, revolts, revolutions and other creative forms of confrontational action.
• XminY prefers to support grassroots organizations.
• XminY prefers to support politically controversial projects that have difficulty finding financial aid elsewhere.
• XminY prefers to support projects that lead to political actions.
• XminY prefers to fund projects that are part of a long term strategy.
• XminY supports projects with a maximum of 3,000 euros.
• XminY only supports projects with a total budget of less than 20,000 euros.
• XminY doesn’t fund structural costs like wages or rental costs.
• XminY doesn’t support conferences, seminars, debates or other meetings unless they clearly aim to prepare for political actions.
• XminY doesn’t finance juridical procedures unless these are part of a broader activist campaign.
• XminY doesn’t support political parties.
• XminY doesn’t support groups that try to exclude other progressive movements.
• XminY doesn’t fund projects specifically aimed at disabled people or children.
• XminY doesn’t fund humanitarian aid or healthcare.
• XminY doesn’t fund emergency aid.
• XminY doesn’t support cultural or educational projects that only aim at raising awareness.
• XminY doesn’t fund micro-credit programs or income generating projects.
• XminY doesn’t support projects through third parties. We want to cooperate directly with the groups we support, without an additional bureaucratic layer in between.

The Team of XminY Solidarity Fund

info@hetactiefonds.nl

In September, at the foot of Lozen Mountain, together with twenty-five youth workers, volunteers and activists from nine countries – Bulgaria, Malta, Portugal, Spain, Hungary, Italy, Germany, Ukraine and Armenia we studied, created and shared stories and good practices in the context of gender equality. All this happened within the international training “Visual Storytelling  from A to Z”, organized from 14 to 23 September 2021 by CVS – Bulgaria, the Bulgarian branch of the international peace movement for and volunteers exchange network Service Civil International.

The training program was divided into thematic modules to provide new information, improve knowledge and develop the skills of the participants and enable sharing in a safe and creative environment. The program included meetings with visual arts experts, as well as a visit to several organizations that shared their own practices in the field of gender equality and further contributed to the training and development process. The modules were arranged thematically: “Meeting and getting to know of the participants”; “Introduction to the topic of gender equality”; “Expert meetings”; “Visual campaigns” “Visual stories become reality”; “Evaluation and reflection”. Also included were “Thematic evenings”, in which they managed to have fun, relax from the work process, but also continue to study and share prints. We created a safe space where everyone can feel comfortable sharing personal experiences and situations, as well as feel free to develop their creativity.

The project aimed to raise the level of self-awareness of the participants regarding their identity and to support their perception as individuals and not as objects of gender-determining stereotypes. The development of these competencies was assessed by the partner organizations as extremely important for the participants, so that they could, within their volunteer organizations at local level, pass on what they have learned to the volunteers and young people they work with. The times in which we live require young people and youth workers to increase their literacy on the topic of gender equality in order to achieve better self-knowledge and confidence to apply in their daily interaction on a personal and professional level. This need responds to their expectations. Objectification of people is very common in different countries and especially among young people brought up in an environment where it is perceived that strength is for boys and emotions are for girls. In the age of technology, young people spend more time online, where many problems are projected. This reality also showed the need to increase media literacy. The world of media and social networks is becoming more and more visual, so the need to develop competencies to distinguish the good from the bad examples of media provocations was also assessed as urgent.

Thus, the problems of our time identified in the planning process determined the goals of the training and the various thematic blocks of the curriculum. In the first part of the training, participants addressed various topics and concepts related to gender and gender equality, feminism, gender-based violence, human rights and discrimination, sex education and the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. They shared the various challenges they identified in their local community, found many similar problems and grouped by interests to create visual narratives to counteract what was happening.

As part of the visual tools we looked at, we visited the premiere screening of the film “Women Do Cry”, which through the stories of several collective female images presents the problems faced by women in Bulgaria. The film was extremely influential and the participants were enthusiastic to discuss the plot lines in detail and to reflect on their own perceptions, connecting the problems shown with the real challenges in their own realities.

In order to achieve a deeper understanding of the topics and to gain a deeper insight into the specifics of the situation in the country, the participants met with experts from Bulgaria, in the person of Lili Dragoeva and Gloria Filipova from Bilitis Foundation, as well as with Yavor Konov from the Ivor Foundation, who painted a realistic picture of the challenges they face in their daily work in the field with people from the community and care for their mental and physical health, as well as the successes they have achieved over the years of hard work.

As part of the program, we organized a Human Library, during which participants were able to meet young people from the LGBTI community, who told them about the difficult personal journey they have taken and the constant struggle they have to lead every day to be themselves in an intolerant and often openly hostile society.

The program in the last module included four mentors-creators and experts in visual arts and social media: Victoria Marinova – an expert in creating concepts and content for social networks, Isabella Markova – a graphic designer who supports a variety of social causes with a unique style of illustrations, Violeta Apostolova – Leti, a photographer who captures details of the soul of the people standing in front of her lens, and Nikola Gulmezov, a journalist and photographer and videographer, whose photo and video stories not only convey the reality refracted through his talented style, but also inspire. For two days, they all supported and guided the participants in the preparation of their mini-campaigns, guiding and giving them useful advice, sensing their wishes about what they wanted to show and offering them a purposeful framework and guidance in the visualization process. Thus, in the second practical part of the training, together with mentors in the field of visual arts and social media, the participants created various mini-campaigns in different media formats on topics such as: sex education, obstetric violence, feminism, the right to abortion and the beauty of diversity. See the great results of this creative process, which the participants themselves are already spreading within their local communities, among friends, families and young people they work with, as well as internationally, through their network of partnerships.

FEMINISM is…
Instagram @page.by.page.2021

MATERNITY
Instagram @informed_maternity_care

I AM YOU

RIGHT to SAVE ABORTION

GENDER DRESS
Instagram @the.gender.dress

Game -sexual eduaction

The project “Visual storytelling from A to Z”,  2019-2-BG01-KA105-062826
 is supported by Erasmus+ Programme, under KA1, Youth workers mobility