Following the obligations and good practices for knowledge exchange and cooperation among projects funded by LIFE, this action will include a set of networking activities between the project’s beneficiaries and those of other ongoing or concluded LIFE projects.

To achieve such goals, two types of activities have been foreseen:

• every beneficiary (including the coordinating beneficiary) has foreseen to execute, along the project works, one visit to a EU based ongoing or concluded LIFE project; These will involve one member of staff from each beneficiary, for visits of about 5 days (including travelling), to get to know “in practice” works that contribute to the project’s goals and activities. At the end of each visit, the applicable element of staff shall write and deploy to all other beneficiaries a synthesis report with the main findings, contacts established and a short SWOT analysis of the visit outputs. In addition, that information shall be presented at the subsequent project coordination meeting;
• in addition, the coordinating beneficiary MONTIS shall invite 2 external beneficiaries from ongoing or concluded LIFE projects to visit the project works and team, for a similar period, from EU member states. Under the visit, such elements are expected to visit the field, participate in one internal workshop with all the project beneficiaries and participate on the program of the seminars.

Despite every beneficiary has from now a possible focus for these networking works, the fact that other LIFE projects approved under the former call for ESC volunteers are not yet known – neither those that will be approved under this call – strongly conditions the final selection of such targets. Under such context, decisions concerning such targets will be taken as part of the regular project management works, in order to promote synergies and higher complementarity and cooperation.

Nevertheless, as indicative guidance, the following guidance will be part of the decision framework concerning the proposal to be presented by each of the project’s beneficiaries visits to external projects:

• higher priority will be given to other LIFE PREP projects dealing with ESC volunteering;
• in addition, the subjects of the volunteering works dealt by the projects to visit should add value to those activities/tasks foreseen ;
• as a final premise, in all, the visits should involve the widest possible of EU countries, so as to increase cooperation and foster dissemination and replication of the project’s solutions regarding ESC volunteers.

Concerning the invitations, these should be preferably focused on ongoing projects dealing with similar structural and concepts as those foreseen in this application. Among other issues, the setting of joint volunteer programs, participated by several organizations, would be a decisive matter. As two invitations are foreseen, the first will be mostly dedicated to critical review of the works proposed by this application (along the preparatory works), whereas the second should be more focused on replication and transfer (along the final months of the project). As in any LIFE project, the idea of networking is twofold, on the one hand to show/evidence what is being done by the project and on the other to get additional valuable opinions on how experience from other projects can be useful to improve the works being undertaken. Under such context, critical review reports are expected as outputs from the LIFE projects to be invited.

Following the obligations and good practices for knowledge exchange and cooperation among projects funded by LIFE, this action will include a set of networking activities between the project’s beneficiaries and those of other ongoing or concluded LIFE projects.

To achieve such goals, two types of activities have been foreseen:

• every beneficiary (including the coordinating beneficiary) has foreseen to execute, along the project works, one visit to a EU based ongoing or concluded LIFE project; These will involve one member of staff from each beneficiary, for visits of about 5 days (including travelling), to get to know “in practice” works that contribute to the project’s goals and activities. At the end of each visit, the applicable element of staff shall write and deploy to all other beneficiaries a synthesis report with the main findings, contacts established and a short SWOT analysis of the visit outputs. In addition, that information shall be presented at the subsequent project coordination meeting;
• in addition, the coordinating beneficiary MONTIS shall invite 2 external beneficiaries from ongoing or concluded LIFE projects to visit the project works and team, for a similar period, from EU member states. Under the visit, such elements are expected to visit the field, participate in one internal workshop with all the project beneficiaries and participate on the program of the seminars.

This action, although carried out and carried out during the project, has as its main objective the post-project success and the sustainability / continuity of the project work. In addition, the specific scope of a call for LIFE PREP may be of more or less importance, and / or replicate the results to the project leverage results. on ESC volunteering for nature conservation.

Under such context, and despite other transfer/replication works are foreseen to be undertaken with identical activities as those of “traditional” LIFE projects – including those of a more technical nature dealing with seminars in action A.1, discussion and delivery of the After-LIFE Plan and its associated training under action C.5 and the networking works of action B.4 – it was agreed that dissemination for further replication and transfer could make a much better use – especially in this case where the target is a new EU policy instrument for engaging young volunteers – of TV broadcast.

With that purpose, benefitting from the diverse universe of associated beneficiaries (including NGO’s, national/local administrations, and even a major umbrella organization of private companies) and the wide range of nature conservation works proposed under actions A.3 to A.11, PLAYSOLUTIONS will ensure a continuous coverage of the concrete conservation works undertaken by all partners to produce a TV series that is expected to be broadcasted under one of the major Portuguese open signal channels, with whom conditional agreement has been obtained since the first preparation of this application, to the 2016 Call (SIC – Sociedade Independente de Comunicação, SA, http://sic.sapo.pt/, see attached support letter). Under that context we should highlight that SIC has a wide range of TV channels, including those directed at the youth, allowing therefore for a wide range of users to be targeted by this output of the project.

The extensive work to be undertaken with volunteers will allow enough and diverse image capturing and production of a full TV series with standard size for broadcasting under such conditions. In all, the foreseen format, for which pre-conditional interest in broadcasting has been achieved with SIC, includes:

• 12 episodes with 15 to 20 minutes each;
• a focus of each episode on the nature conservation works promoted by each beneficiary, including the presentation of the target conservation problem (including its relation to N2000 and the Birds and Habitats Directives, when applicable), hosting of the volunteers by the partner organization, and the work undertaken on-field to overcome the problem.

A strong complimentary focus will be given to the volunteer’s own experiences and feelings about the undertaken work and the skills/competencies gained throughout the volunteering period, so that their experiences can be shared among a wider audience. The wide range dissemination of these individual experiences of the volunteers that will participate on these works is expected to have a relevant contribute to promote further “engagement” with the ESC and experience sharing among volunteers. In addition to communicating the environmental results from the work of ESC volunteers, each episode will account to “real life” testimonies which will be centred on the volunteers’ experience along their volunteering cycle. This type of “human centred” series was one of the main issues for engaging PLAYSOLUTIONS within the project’s partnership, as this communication SME has been producing most of its nature and biodiversity conservation materials with such differentiating elements that deal with the “human side” of conservation: who are the conservationists, what they do and how do they feel is a key element on any of the products from this partner, and such basic idea was actually the basis for setting, within the project structure, the overall goal of producing and delivering this TV series.

PLAYSOLUTIONS will be in charge of all the works, including image capturing, script writing, image and sound edition and overall production and post-production, having for aim the delivery of a high quality series that fulfills the broadcasting criteria of SIC (with whom a close interaction will be maintained along the process, as already existing for identical works).

The series will be delivered in FULL HD definition (1920×1080), as well as on the corresponding formats for web dissemination. For open broadcasting, conversion for the channel’s format will be ensured as well.

To support PLAYSOLUTIONS’s works, MONTIS will act deliver general coordination support, including the promotion of active discussion and approval of the proposed scripts among all beneficiaries, before their final production. Each beneficiary will support PLAYSOLUTION’s team during the respective coverage and capturing of images (this not including the costs for travel and stay, which are foreseen under PLAYSOLUTIONS’s budget of this action).

For production of the series PLAYSOLUTIONS foresees the need to allocate internal staff as well as to subcontract some specific works (e.g. sound editing, EN broadcasting, script translation, coloring of video and graphical design).

Once ready, meetings with SIC will be held to present the series and outline/plan the schedule for broadcasting, preferably embracing the last year of the project but, if needed, overpassing it as well. In addition, the videos will be delivered by the project’s website and for internal and public usage by all project partners.