Aims and structure
The Alliance is a European based International Non Governmental Youth Organisation, officially registered in Denmark since 2005.
Our objectives
- To provide voluntary service organisations with opportunities to discuss and exchange experience and information within Europe.
- To facilitate and improve the co-operation between voluntary service organisations.
- To look after the interests of its members through exercising influence on international bodies involved in voluntary service, youth policy, youth training and youth exchange, as an initiative for the furtherance of youth exchange and voluntary service.
- To inform members about debates and developments at a European and non-European level which are of relevance to the members.
- The Alliance aims at the widest possible co-operation at a European and a non-European level.
- The EC ensures that the functioning of the Alliance is in accordance with the common interest of its members.
Our structure
- The Alliance mainly functions thanks to the voluntary involvement of activists and volunteers mandated by their organisations (Alliance members) for a period of 1 or 2 years, depending on the structural body type. These people are active in the TEAMS (replacing the former Executive Committee active until 2022 (see below for more explanation)), as well as in several other bodies, such as Necessary Action Groups (NAGs) and Communities of Interests (COIs).
- TEAMS are the newest structural body of our network and have been created as one of the outcomes of the restructuring process that we have been going through since 2020. They came into motion officially at the last Alliance General Assembly taking place in November 2022. Their mission is to underpin the work of the NAGs in implementing the yearly Plan of Action (PoA) and of the CoIs in bringing forward the priorities of the Strategic Direction. TEAMS have a support, monitoring, and evaluation role towards NAGs and CoIs, and in this sense, they are key to the capacity building of people involved in the Alliance. They also implement some permanent tasks that require a longer-term commitment and more specific expertise such as the management of finances and digital tools) . TEAMS are in charge of providing the General Assembly (GA) with adequate means and information in order to make informed decisions regarding the yearly Plan of Action, the Strategic Direction, TEAMS composition, membership issues, and all other topics the GA is dealing with. (For more info on Teams responsibilities/tasks you can check the Alliance Standing Orders document between page 3-11 here: https://bit.ly/3iFlKmJ )
- TEAMS are accountable to the General Assembly for the results that they are meant to reach. In return, the General Assembly and the members trust their decisions, delegating to them the day to day operations of the network. They also have few reasonable tasks to deal with on a regular basis, as their main mission is to provide support for the NAGs and CoIs. On the other hand, they have a specific field of expertise the NAGs and CoIs can count on in case of need.
- TEAMS are divided into 8 areas that reflect the roles/responsibilities described above;
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- Team Monitoring and Evaluation
- Team Financial Management
- Team Internal Affairs
- Team External Affairs
- Team Education
- Team Knowledge Hub
- Team Data
- Team Interface
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- The number of people in each Team is different according to the number of people actually involved , as well as the numbers of NAG’s and CoI’s counting on support, and the number of permanent tasks each Team has. It is up to its members to define the number of people needed in the Team, though it is advised to be at least 2 and not to be more than 10. For the sake of preserving the knowledge and democratic participation within the Teams, the call is launched every year in order to ensure that there are both new and one-year-old members within the Team at all times.
- For 2023, we have 30 members appointed to the 8 TEAMS mentioned above. While doing these structural changes, we decided to keep 3 constitutional and administrative positions from the former Executive Committee structure: President (P), Treasurer (T), and General Secretary (GS) in order to stay in line with the legal requirements of Danish authorities and be eligible for external grants. These positions are elected by the GA delegates and have a 2 years mandate just like other TEAMS members. Once the GA elects the P, GS and T, they automatically enter the following 3 teams;
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- President: Team Monitoring & Evaluation
- General Secretary: Team Internal Affairs
- Treasurer: Team Financial Management
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- In order to keep the communication flow fluid between the different teams, joint meetings of the Teams (called Team Representatives EXpo, (T-REX)) are planned by the Monitoring & Evaluation Team. At least one representative per Team participates in each T-REX meeting; this representative can be different each time and prepares their intervention with the entire Team they represent. The objectives of these meetings are to ensure that everything in the network that is happening follows the Strategic Directions and that the actions from the Plan of Action are implemented. These meetings can happen in any way the participants deem fitting: physically, online, or during different Alliance events during the year. It is up to the Team Monitoring and Evaluation to decide how many T-REX meetings are needed throughout the year. The only conditions are:
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- At least one member from each Team should be present
- The costs of organising these meetings can not exceed the GA-approved budget for the meetings of all the Teams.
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- A NAG (Necessary Action Group) is a temporary, self-organised group with a clear, time-limited, and specific task to prepare, implement, and complete. When an activity is essential for the existence of the Alliance network, it becomes a task for a NAG. These tasks can be either recurrent events or specific actions that the Alliance considers essential for its survival in the following year. Each NAG receives clear guidelines from the General Assembly, in order to complete its task. All this information is outlined in the yearly Plan of Action (output – expected outcomes/impact, success indicators to measure progress) and, in the case of recurring structural network events, also in the Standing Orders.
- The Plan of Action contains only the activities to be implemented by NAGs. A NAG communicates regularly with the Alliance members. As each NAG is aiming for high quality, its members are experienced on the relevant topic(s) and cover all the expertise needed to complete the task. NAGs receive the support of the TEAMS members that are not part of the NAG, when and if needed. All individuals mandated by member organisations can be part of a NAG. Its composition depends on the expertise needed to complete the task. Members of the TEAMS and Alliance’s staff can also be part of a NAG. After the General Assembly and the approval of the Plan of Action, a call is sent out for the needed NAGs. There is no minimum or maximum number of members, nor is there a selection process. If during the year a NAG needs more expertise in the group in order to complete the task, new members can join based on a specific need. The NAG dissolves once the task is completed.
- COIs (Communities Of Interest) are the fertile soil for new ideas and creative try-outs, with the aim to develop the Alliance network and at the same time motivate new young people to start engaging and take more responsibility and ownership in our Alliance network through tasks, projects, activities, campaigns, trainings, etc. The reference document for the creation of a COI and for the development of its work, is the Strategic Direction: this document sets the priorities of the Alliance for the following 6 years and is adopted by the General Assembly of Alliance members.gathering the values important for the Alliance: cooperation and solidarity, democratic participation and active citizenship, gender equality, inclusion, intercultural understanding, international voluntary service, mobility, non-formal education, peace, sustainability.
- COI’s projects are not part of the Plan of Action. In case they raise an issue or develop an initiative that is considered vital for the network, they can be translated into tasks in the next Plan of Action, effectively creating a NAG to continue the work the next year. An online platform allows members to see the existing COIs and their contact email. COIs can ask for support from the TEAMS and other network bodies, but they are responsible for their activities, i.e.
- The CoIs are receiving access to a “toolbox”, providing them with tools for self-organisation. As the Interface but also the other Teams active in the Alliance are here to support their work and initiatives, we can qualitatively support a high number of initiatives of many different kinds implemented by Communities.
- In order to support the creation and running of CoIs, Alliance created the Interface Team, responsible for:
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- Reaching out to young people, youth workers and youth organisations to let them know about the opportunity of actions this system is giving them;
- Connecting young people and youth workers with each other according to their interests and the topics they want to tackle;
- Supporting their work and efforts and help them achieving the goals they set for themselves ;
- Supporting them in evaluating the initiative they implemented, pointing out the positive and negative aspects, the space for improvement for a next initiative ;
- Encouraging them to come up with a new initiative, or take on more responsibilities in the future ;
- Making sure that the work and projects that were done by the Communities are known, recognised, used and passed on within the network and beyond.
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- In addition to the volunteers who are involved every year in our activities through the TEAMS, NAGs, and CoIs, the network also counts on a small permanent Secretariat that was established by the General Assembly (GA) in 2010. The network’s Secretariat is currently being hosted by our member organisations.
- The Alliance’s Secretariat consists of four staff positions;
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- Secretary of Internal Procedures (SIP)
- Alliance Project Manager (APM)
- Alliance Finance Manager (AFM)
- Communication & External Affairs Officer (CEAO)
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- Alliance Structure 2024
