Half of the INVOLVE project time with lots of processes and results on the local as well as on the international level has passed by now. Therefore the INVOLVE! coordinators met in Berlin during three days in January 2006 in order to evaluate what has been achieved by now and what is left to do. All the international coordinators as well as some local coordinators participated in this meeting. The main subjects and outcomes of the meeting have been:

Day 1: Recent developments of the local projects:

Achievements, problems, possibilities for mutual support

We have seen how different the development of the projects have been, how complicated it sometimes was to adapt them to the actual needs of the young people involved and at the same time to the general framework of I.N.V.O.L.V.E.! But we have also seen how many good ideas we had and how many possibilities for support we can mutually provide if we talk about our experiences on the international level. One concrete example of mutual support is the plan to publish a brochure about all our definitions of and ideas about participation in France as there might be money available for such a purpose that lacks in other counries. The first day of close talking about our recent experiences has brought us much closer together and gave us very interesting insights in our partners’ work.

Day 2: the international work:

Evaluation of the Summer Academy 2005

Preparation of the final international meeting in summer 2006

International communication

In the morning we took a little insight in how the international coordinators had evaluated the Summer Academy. This inspired us to pass on to the planning of the international summer meeting in 2006. We jointly developed the main goals of this meeting which are:

1. Plan other projects together & create a network
2. Evaluation of the whole project I.N.V.O.L.V.E.!
3. Reflection on participation
4. Define best practices and successful methodologies
5. Share time & personal experiences / get to know each other

We also agreed that it is particularly important to work effectively through priorities

In the afternoon we spoke about the international communication during a long session. The discussion was quite emotional, as some of us were quite frustrated about the lack of communication that takes place on the international level. We learned a lot about different expectations, needs and possibilities of communication and worked in small groups on ways to facilitate and to encourage the communication process. We jointly developed models for regular meetings in the forum, for a better information transfer to the local participants, for accessibility of the internet and for support with language difficulties.

Day 3: Web site and finances:

Financial state of quo in the local and international projects

The web site as a tool for communication

We spoke about the financial state of affairs on the international as well as on the local level. We learned that on the international level, the biggest problems had been solved and that the EU would soon tranfer the next tranch of money so that with some waiting period all the international partners could be paid for their work. We then passed to the financial situation on the local level. It was a great conversation. We were surprised how much it gave us the occasion to understand much better what happened in each country, how different the political, associational and local structures work and how much all of us have already invested to get the project I.N.V.O.L.V.E.! going. Giving each other some insights in the financial situation was thus a good motor for confidence-building among us and for mutual understanding of each other’s situation.

We also spoke about the web site and agreed on two major goals of this tool: 1. inner communication – with those who are already involved in the project (participants, coordinators); 2. outside communication - with those who might become interested (people active in the field of youh participation, youth, sponsors, partners). We talked a lot about the need to feed the sites about the local projects with more contents and are now looking forward for seeing them develop much more. One person in each country on the local level was officially named as a responsible for the website: Riccardo, Magaly, Marian, Swetlana/ Marcel and Alfonso. Everybody showed a great motivation for working much more with the web site.