CRECOM

Background

The project is a response to the changes that occurred as a result of the 2020 pandemic outbreak. At that time, all aspects of our lives were being distanced, physical contact and encounters were being severely restricted, and everyday processes were being moved online.

Digital education solutions were immediately developed in almost every country, followed immediately by major industry and policy developments to support the education process in schools. At the same time, other learning, community-building and leisure activities have simply ground to a halt, leaving a huge void. The starting point for our project was this vacuum situation, in which community programme organisers in small municipalities tried to do their best, but in many cases the lack of knowledge and experience, methodological skills, approaches and the inflexibility of organisations, their inability to change, their inability to adapt quickly and effectively were obstacles to their adaptation.

In developing the project, we therefore identified a lack of opportunities for self-development of the digital and methodological skills of professionals involved in the organisation of community programmes and the tools needed to make work organisations more flexible.

Objectives

Based on the above mentioned issues and the needs we identified during the preparation of the project, we wanted to achieve the following.

Our goal was for local communities to once again fulfil the social functions they faced before the current epidemic.

-> To do this, community organizations need to be able to formulate a new strategy adapted to the circumstances.

They need to formulate new elements in their strategy, both in terms of content and the circumstances and methods of implementation.

-> And they need to be able to implement the formulated strategy.

Trainers, program organizers and volunteers who enable the birth of community programs also have a key role to play in the implementation and planning of the strategy. So the goal

of our project is also to make them prepared and able to use their existing and newly learned knowledge and resources in a creative way.

Implementation

During the implementation of the project, our activities covered two main areas.

1. In project management activities, we organised online and offline partner meetings, held regular meetings within the partner organisations and kept in touch with institutions and stakeholders at partner level.
2. Content development was the primary element of the project. This involved brainstorming, workshops and independent content development activities, both jointly during partner meetings and within the development teams of the partner organisations. As part of this, we also carried out internal review and commenting activities for both intellectual outputs, giving constructive feedback on each other's work in terms of both content and form. Also an important part of the activities was the complex testing by external stakeholders and experts, prepared, coordinated and analysed by the partners.

Results

The concrete results of the project are the following.

A competency map outlining the relevant competencies of community programme organisers in the light of creative responses to changing circumstances. The competency map describes the key competencies in four activity areas using four descriptors.

An e-learning platform and four modules of learning material targeting the competences developed in the competence map. The curriculum is also self-paced and aims to develop the competences of community programme organisers to respond creatively to changing circumstances.

An action plan to move beyond the individual dimension to develop organisational frameworks. It provides help, background information and tips to unblock organisational pain points that hinder flexible, innovative, creative solutions and adaptability, so that institutions can start to make better and more effective use of their own creative resources.

All results are available in 5 languages: English, Hungarian, Romanian, Portuguese, Dutch.

All results are freely available, downloadable, without any limitations.