In its efforts to continuously seek funding to support our priorities and activities at National and Regional levels, the European Scout Region of the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM) is pleased to share with you the following information in relation to an upcoming large-scale project application under the scope of the Erasmus+ Programme, Partnerships for Cooperation in the fields of Education and Training and Youth - European NGO.

The project will be focused on measuring The Community Impact of Scouting through achieving a common understanding of the various elements related to it and defining a benchmark for measurements. Ultimately, the project will demonstrate, which results can contribute to support growth, enhance the quality of programmes and improve the image of Scouting worldwide.
Please carefully read the description of the project and its timeline below. Please let us know your interest in becoming a partner to this project by 15 March 2023 to be able to develop this project together.

The funding application will be submitted to the European Commission by the World Scout Bureau Europe Support Centre, Brussels Office, at the end of March 2023.

Description and objective of the project

One of the Strategic Priorities of WOSM is to develop our capacity to measure the Impact of Scouting. To do this, we are building up on the work of the ongoing Measuring Impact of Youth Organisations (MIYO) Project to support the further development of the impact measurement toolkit and tackle the community development aspect.

The current project aims at measuring the impact of scouting on the personal development of young people, while touching upon community and institutional development through the perspective of young people. The new proposal is an ambition to take the empirical work to the next level by conducting comprehensive community impact studies.

The objectives will be achieved by:

1. Forming a network of a research institution and youth organisations from Scouting and outside with an aim to explore, strengthen and disseminate best practices of impact measurement among the project consortium members.
2. Creating a comprehensive methodology to measure the social impact of Scouting’s non formal education offer to communities around.
3. Gathering comparable data across several European countries and different youth organisations to improve the educational offer of Scouting.
4. Strengthening the self-evaluation capacity of youth organisations to use the impact assessment methodology through statistically valid data collection and analysis tools and with a help of trained consultants.

What type of partnership is proposed for this project?

The identified partner NSO/NSAs will be full partners to this project both at the stage of the application development and the project implementation. Partner NSO/NSAs will also be actively involved in the shaping of the new WOSM Service on Impact measurement by getting deeper insights into the latest work on impact evaluation. The European Scout Region will need your further support in identifying target groups for research and building an approach suitable to your organisation.

In order to achieve this ambitious plan, we are building a funding application under the scope of the Erasmus+ Programme. NSO/NSAs selected will participate in this funding application with a partner status.

Selection of partner NSO/NSAs: From those interested in the topic of the project, we will be selecting a small group based on a number of indicators to ensure representation of Scouting organisations from across the Region. Among the main pre-selection criteria are the size of the organisation, its geographic spread and structure (i.e.: NSOs and NSAs). Please note that in order to make the final selection, NSO/NSAs pre-selected as a result of this Call for Partners, will be requested to provide additional information in an individual follow-up format.

Note that if you are not selected for the trials, you will still be able to benefit from the future WOSM Service.

How to signal your interest to become partner for this project?

Please provide all the relevant information by completing this application form by Wednesday, 15 March 2023. Our project team will get in contact with you shortly afterwards to advise on the outcome of your application and, if relevant, on the follow-up steps.

WOSM Member Organisations from which countries are eligible to become partner for this project?

NSO/NSAs from all Member States of the European Union (EU27; i.e. Programme Countries) are eligible.

Further information

For further questions related to this Call for Partners or more generally about the project please contact Lana Husagić (lana.husagic@scout.org), Impact of Scouting Team Lead, or Margarita Gaboyan (margarita.gaboyan@scout.org), staff support.