The EAEA Grundtvig Award 2011 goes to the association Lunaria from Italy for their project "SENIOR EUROPEAN VOLUNTEERS EXCHANGE NETWORK - SEVEN".

Davide di Pietro from Lunaria tells EAEA News that "Volunteering is basically about doing something for someone else. But it also has a broader meaning. We believe that through volunteering you can have a full learning experience".
What does this mean? Davide says that for them the educational aspect is really central. This is why Lunaria always tries to link educational features to volunteering, especially for volunteering abroad. "We are particularly interested in intercultural learning", he explains.
2011 is the European Year of Volunteering, and traditionally the topic for the EAEA Grundtvig Award follows the same theme. A jury analyzed 13 projects submitted for the award, and the selection in the end fell on Lunaria. According to the jury, "among several good projects two are selected as excellent - SEVEN - Senior European Volunteers Exchange Network (Associazione di Promozione Sociale LUNARIA from Italy) and Learning experiences through volunteering (Lempäälä-opisto from Finland) and the winner of the Grundtvig award for 2011 is the project SEVEN.
The SEVEN Network was set up in 2007. What people learns depends on the way the exchange takes place but Davide says he can observe two main categories of learning: intercultural learning and transversal competences such as listening to others, cooperating, etc.
The project involved 29 organizations from several countries, creating and implementing a Senior Volunteering Program - exchange and visit of volunteers abroad. More than 300 volunteers has taken part so far in a volunteer exchange, but equally important the project developed a set of educational tools for the exchange and ways to disseminate the results. The project also fostered the creation of bilateral or trilateral partnerships among various partners. Thus they will be facilitated in the implementation of their mobility and exchange projects. The project made the contribution toward:

- networking volunteers
- active ageing policies
- increasing mobility

Combining these aspects, the project SEVEN made a significant and sustainable contribution to the European Year of Volunteering."
It is not the first time Lunaria has been awarded in European circumstances. In May 2007 they won the Lifelong Learning gold award (Period: 2000-2006, Action: Grundtvig) for the Multilateral Project "Still Active! - Performing Voluntary Service after 55 Years Old" that developed the concept of and operational approaches to implementing an international voluntary service for older people.
Lunaria is an association for social promotion.
It was created in 1992, and since then it is a non-governmental body, autonomous from religious and political affiliations and not-profit. Their activities focus on research and action research, training and communication on several social issues such as fair economy, the development of the third sector, the study of migration flows, globalization, the trends and the links between democracy and participation and the importance of informal and non-formal education through the promotion of international voluntary service activities.
But back to Davide, and the idea of a "learning experience". When EAEA News asks what this actually means, he explains that "When you volunteer you may go to another country, perhaps to assist in some community based social project. During your stay you learn all the time, about the country, the culture, the people and so on. The trick is to make you aware of it, and help you understand what you are experiencing".