Savez izviđača Hrvatske — Project KORAk dalje

The challenge

The Croatian Scout Association came to us with something relatively rare: a project that already had a clear strategic rationale, a committed partnership structure, and a genuine intervention concept. They had done the hard work of identifying the problem — the gap between the potential of service learning (društveno korisno učenje) as a pedagogical approach and its actual uptake in Croatian higher education and primary schools — and had assembled the right partners to address it: the University of Zadar and the Faculty of Educational Sciences in Osijek.

What they needed was help translating that vision into a proposal that could compete under the Second Swiss Contribution programme, Civil Society strand, focused on service learning and civic education. This is a programme with specific technical requirements — a defined logic model, measurable outputs, a realistic timeline, and a credible implementation plan — and the gap between having a good idea and having a fundable proposal is not trivial.

What we did

Our role in this engagement was to take the Association’s existing concept and partnership framework and transform it into a complete, competitive project application. This required both analytical and writing work: researching the context and evidence base for service learning in Croatia and internationally, mapping the regulatory and institutional framework within which the project would operate, and then developing the full project narrative.

Project KORAk dalje — which will run for 36 months in partnership with the University of Zadar and the Faculty of Educational Sciences in Osijek — is designed to embed service learning systematically in both higher education and primary schools. The project will research and develop service learning models, improve an existing university course and design a new one, and create and verify a curriculum for an extracurricular activity (“School Scout Group”) suitable for primary schools across Croatia.

The scale is significant: 160 teachers from 100 schools across four cycles of professional development, more than 100 service learning actions in local communities, and more than 200 students in service learning-enriched courses. The project connects the academic community, students, teachers, and scout volunteers in a way that is designed to produce lasting changes in practice — not just a pilot that ends when the funding runs out.

We structured the full application: the theory of change, the activity plan and work packages, the partnership agreement framework, the budget, the monitoring and evaluation plan, and the narrative. We also worked to ensure the proposal was positioned effectively relative to the programme’s priorities around civic competences, community participation, and the green transition.

Outcome

Full project proposal developed and submitted. Project KORAk dalje positions the Croatian Scout Association and its academic partners as leaders in the systematic development of service learning in Croatia.