European Solidarity Corps

Why the European Solidarity Corps (ESC)? 

The European Solidarity Corps is the European Commission's response to the challenges nearly 100 million young people in the European Union are facing and how they can be involved and united.
It targets young people between 18 and 30 years old.
The European Solidarity Corps was officially launched in December 2016 after it was announced by the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, in the speech on the state of the European Union in September 2016. This was the beginning of the first of the three stages of implementation of the ESC, the one in which it operated with funding from eight existing programs that had similar objectives.
All details can be accessed on the official website of the Programme: www.suntsolidar.eu.

Budget and implementation period

With a total budget of 340 million Euros between 2018 and 2020 for all participating countries, it is estimated that Romania will benefit from about 9 million Euros of it.

Types of projects

Three types of projects are funded through the National Agencies (occupational, voluntary and solidarity) in the European Solidarity Corps. The activities will take place in one of the EU member countries.

Occupational projects

They last between 3 and 24 months and can include one or more of the activities described below, besides those of preparation, monitoring, evaluation, dissemination and exploitation of results:

• jobs
• traineeship
  At the same time, without being mandatory, such projects may include:
• advanced planning visits
• complementary activities

Volunteering projects

They last between 3 and 24 months and can include one or more of the activities described below, besides those of preparation, monitoring, evaluation, dissemination and exploitation of results:

• volunteering internships
• volunteer teams
  At the same time, without being mandatory, such a project may include:
• advanced planning visits
• complementary activities

Solidarity projects

They last between 2 and 12 months and they can be implemented by young people organized as informal groups at the national level (thus, they must not have a trans-national partnership). In this way young people have the opportunity to try innovative ideas being directly and actively involved in the planning, implementation, monitoring and dissemination of results.
They are very similar to the Youth initiatives projects from the former Youth in action program.