SocialErasmus

The SocialErasmus project aims to encourage the integration of international students in the communities that have received them, promoting changes through volunteering activities. Mobility doesn't consist only of travelling or studying abroad, but it actively involves students by promoting cultural comprehension and inspiring them, once they go back home, to keep leaving a mark in their society.

The initiative develops taking into account eight areas:

• Environment
• Animals
• Disasters
• Discrimination
• Education
• Poverty
• Health
• Violence

As of 2012 ESN Italy organizes the SocialErasmus Week twice a year, and almost all the Italian sections take part in them.
Under the SocialErasmus project, ESN Italy has started, during the years, many important collaborations with both public and private national institutions.
Would you like to become our partner for the next SocialErasmus activities? Contact ESN Italy or the nearest local section.

HISTORY

The SocialErasmus project was born in Poland in 2008. Thanks to its success at national level, the project was started in the other countries of the ESN Network and, in 2012, it was voted as ESN International's flagship project.

The project offers to international students the chance to culturally enrich themselves and to know as best as possible their host local community; it promotes social aptitude and encourages the students to join the world of volunteering.

At the international level, every year a meeting (SECM) is organised, which is addressed to national coordinators. In this gathering is possible to confront the responsible people from the other countries, to share experiences and develop new ideas.

SOCIALERASMUS AND ESN ITALY

Since 2012 ESN Italy develops and promotes on a national and local level the SocialErasmus project. A working group was set up in order to monitor the Italian sections and to make it through these and the international level.

NATIONAL LEVEL

As previously said, ESN Italy organises two times a year the SocialErasmus week, but the volunteering activities do not take place just in these two periods. As a matter of fact, during the year, almost all the Italian sections organise many events always in respect of the project’s guidelines.

It is at the international level that Italy is one of the most active countries, thanks mainly to the great job and commitment of the local sections.

Unlike it happens at the international level, in Italy the area dedicated to education develops mainly throughout the Erasmus in Schools project that, even if separated from it, maintains an active cooperation with the SocialErasmus one.

LOCAL LEVEL

Each local section of ESN Italy has a SocialErasmus local coordinator who cooperates with the other local coordinators and interfaces with the national coordinator of the project.
Coordinating the project at a national level allows the cooperation between sections, the sharing of ideas, the exchange of information and it is a source of motivation for the volunteers’ work.
All the Italian sections, at least once a year, involve the international students in enjoyable and socially useful and educational events: from the rise of funds to give to people in need, to sensitisation meetings, to volunteering days in hospitals.
Organising these activities encourages the birth of cooperations with the other charity organisations, institutions and private entities, improving the image of the organisation and giving a supportive mark to the international exchange program.

The slogan of the project is...
Leave Your Mark!