YTNF :: SCIDeutschland

As our large-scale project, Youth Transcending New Frontiers, will shortly be ending- and without wishing to pre-empt the results of the final evaluation conference - it might be an appropriate time to make a short, balanced assessment of what we have all achieved together during these last 3 years. Some things immediately spring to mind:

We have run 6 successful international training courses for more than one hundred active volunteers of voluntary organisations in four different countries
More than sixty young people have been educated & trained to prepare, implement and evaluate their own mini-projects in the field of voluntary service within their local communities
Literally thousands of local people have been impacted in some way by a broad range of innovative activities focusing on the issues of either racism, human rights or social exclusion
Our partners have learned valuable new skills and know-how in the areas of project management, fundraising, teamwork & group leadership, conflict management, cooperation, intercultural communication, peer motivation, organisational democracy and other key issues
A network of new potential partners has emerged, both at local, national & international level
The role of the civil sector as a productive, challenging & powerful force in society has become more visible and attractive in all these four CIS-countries
The concept of performing active volunteer service as such has been broadly and positively advertised among young people in those same four countries
We have clearly demonstrated the advantages of mutually beneficial and peaceful cooperation as an alternative to those seeking to solve conflicts by violence

Obviously, this list could be continued. But, having said that, have we really succeeded in achieving our main aim, which was to build up the capacity of our partners sufficiently to enable them to survive, consolidate & then blossom as stable voluntary organisations in the long run?

Of course only the passage of time will tell. Yet still, there remains a lingering doubt that without further external support, progress will be very hard indeed. Ending YTNF also means ending the support for the wages of the main persons working in the offices of the organisations. It means finding alternative sources of finance for future activities which are already in the pipeline. This latter task remains a daunting one, given that national and loal authorities are still not able (or willing) to provide (any) regular financial support to NGOs, or that national laws are still not conducive to making charity donations, nor is there any tradition of private fundraising events or donations as are common-rule in some countries like the US.

It is, therefore, the feeling that this might have been just a "one-off" project whose memory will quickly fade into dust that most gives cause for dismay & pessimism among organisers like myself (athough this feeling is not shared by the four organisations themselves, I should hasten to add!).

In a world which is largely dominated by money and the overriding search for material gain, it is still not commonplace that there is a minority of young people who are willing to engage themselves voluntarily to improve their societies, try to highlight & eliminate the causes of suffering and social injustice, and try to find peaceful solutions to conflicts, in order to make the world a better place to live in for us all.

In a nutshell, idealistic volunteers who have a vision, hope and dream of an alternative, just & peaceful world.
In that sense, I would like to call on people & foundations of goodwill to continue supporting such young people & their organisations, because, having seen them in action, I believe they truly & duly deserve it.

Amities,

John Myers
Senior Manager