Cross-border volunteering for peace and reconciliation is a tool that combines community engagement and peace education, both essential for strengthening civic and intercultural competence, a decisive element for reconciliation as well as democratization of WB societies.
Route WB6 project is a regional project in the Western Balkan Six that promotes cross-border long-term and short-term volunteering as a tool that will contribute to the reduction of social and ethnic distance among young people in the region and emphasize pro-social and European values that will lead to reconciliation, stability and prosperity of the WB6 region.
The overall objective of the Route WB6 project is to make youth from the WB region drivers of reconciliation and societal reconstruction, able to promote European values, initiate and lead intercultural dialogue and regional cooperation towards socio-economic and democratic development.
Throughout the Route WB6 project implementing partners will use cross-border volunteering as a mechanism for reducing social and ethnic distance among young people in the region and raising pro-social and European values to foster reconciliation, stability and prosperity in the WB6 region.
The advocating strategy can be divided into three project outcomes:
- Volunteering policy reform – to promote an enabling policy environment for volunteering development in order to increase the outreach of young people who volunteer; this will contribute to the creation of the regional policy foundation on volunteering that partner organizations will use as the framework for advocacy efforts on volunteering policy reforms in WB6.
- Establishment of the Regional Volunteer Service and regional volunteer program ROUTE WB6 – The Regional Volunteer Services will serve as the regional resource center on volunteering that will collect resources and coordinate the work of the National Volunteer Services in each of the Wb6 with a purpose to: make available regional volunteering practice, ensure regional advocacy effort for volunteering policy; promote cross-border volunteering for peace and reconciliation; maintain regional program ROUTE WB6; provide capacity building to CSOs and youth beneficiaries of the regional program as well as to monitor and evaluate regional volunteer programs.
- Scaling up of the Regional Volunteer Program ROUTE WB6 – the newly designed regional program will be scaled up through RYCO’s 1st granting round for volunteering available for the organizations and schools in WB6. 50 individuals will have the opportunity to get involved in long-term exchanges and around 400 young people will participate in group volunteer exchanges. These exchanges will consist of both a community engagement and an education component to further reconciliation and intercultural dialogue. The Project supports RYCO’s work in partnering with civil society, education systems and schools, grass-roots movements, youth institutions and youth in general.
Contact information:
Zorana Tovilović
tel. +387 33 778 763
email: zorana.tovilovic@kultbih.org
Donors and partners
The ROUTE WB6 project is financed by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is implemented by a consortium led by Regional Youth Cooperation Office (RYCO) in association with the following organizations from WB6 – Institute for Youth Development KULT, Beyond Barriers, South East European Youth Network, Lens, Youth Cultural Center Bitola, Association for Democratic Prosperity Zid and Young Researchers of Serbia.
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