Embark with us on one of the most remarkable train journeys ever undertaken: 24 countries, 14 cities, 4 weeks, 1 train. And you!

Get involved today! The Unity Express relies on the help of volunteers – this is your journey!

Build lasting relationships across cultures with fellow passengers as we live, work and play together.

Be inspired by the diversity in the countries that we travel through – and on the train itself.

We’ve been creating some new possibilities over the past weeks for people to start volunteering for The Unity Express Project. This blog post explains the new Volunteers Network, the Challenges section on this website and how it works.

The Volunteers Network

A fancy name for a very simple idea: up till now we never had a really good way of knowing who did or wants to do something for the project. It sort of happened all the time and we remembered them by name and E-mail address. Or they would stay in touch with us.

We thought we could do that a little more structured. We took some time to develop a form that you can fill in so that you are registered as a volunteer for The Unity Express. This is good for us, because now we can easily search for people that for example are good at web development or writing texts if we need that kind of help. And we will never forget about the people that once helped us out if we have new challenges in the future. It’s also good for you, because you’ll only get notified of challenges that you are familiar with, get invitations to volunteer-only parties and, if resources and budget allows us to, even some goodies as appreciation for what you did! All because of this great little form that allows us to keep in touch with you :)

Sign up as volunteer in the Volunteers Network here »

Challenges for volunteers

Whenever we spoke or E-mailed with people that said they wanted to help out, we were always saying like “yeah, there is so much to do, we are sure going to find something for you!”, never really having a concrete idea what that person could start doing right now. The thing is: there is indeed always a lot to do in the project, but a lot requires quite a bit of knowledge about the project. Not something you can hand over like that to someone and expect them to get it right away.

With the new Challenges menu item under “The Project” (and also the convenient sidebar list on the right) you can now see what tasks we have put up for anybody to pick up and complete. We have done our best to describe the challenges as detailed as possible so you know exactly what to do. Just clicking the “I accept this challenge” button is enough to get you started. All we ask is that you send a short E-mail telling us who you are and what your plans are.

Go see the current Challenges & start one today »

What do you think?

Good new features? Rubbish? Unnecessary? Brilliant move? Can’t wait to get started? Well, we can’t wait to hear from you all what you think! Is the form for the Volunteers Network easy to fill in? Are there questions or options missing? And how about the Challenges? Are they OK or still too vague? Please share your feedback and we’ll look into it!

We are happy to announce that serious talks are going on between us and Generation Europe Foundation (a non-profit organisation in Brussels), to combine and organize The Unity Express together. But before we go celebrating, we want you, as follower and contributor, to get to know them a bit and have a say in all of this. Because that is what we are: a transparent organization. Let us tell you what is going on.

The start of The Unity Express project was in February 2010. Back then, we started on a project of which we had no idea how big it could become. Now, almost 1,5 years and countless experiences later, we came to the conclusion that we can’t do it alone. And by that we don’t mean voluntary help; we knew that from the start. And boy do we appreciate all the help we have gotten so far. No, we need a strong, very experienced and credible partner that wants to organize The Unity Express together with us, on all levels. Because even though we are certain that we have the capabilities and the passion to make a journey like this, other (financial) partners might think otherwise: we have no track record, no financial capabilities and the team is fairly young. In other words: for them we are just a bunch of hippies wanting to change the world.

Who is Generation Europe Foundation?

Generation Europe Foundation’s creation in 1995 was based on a simple observation: that the young represent tomorrow’s decision-makers who will live, work, consume and contribute to the economic and political fibre of the world in the years to come.

Its goal is to engage tomorrow’s decision-makers, today, by engaging in two-way communication with young people on all issues that will have an impact on their future.

They have more than 15 years of experience in Europe-wide projects, volunteers in 36 countries (some of which are extremely active) and a staff of about 10 people in their own office in the middle of Brussels. Each year they release a diary in all 27 EU member states for high school students and teachers. They have also conducted extensive research on youth unemployment in Europe.

The bottom line is that GEF is very into Europe, has close connections with the European Commission and its values are very close to ours.

A win-win situation

We think the interests of us and GEF are complimentary to each other. We have the worked out concept, the experience to deal with train partners and put a lot of effort in creating a community of followers already. This is extremely valuable for GEF. In turn GEF can provide us the credibility and experience of running and maintaining a big project like this. GEF is like that uncle with all the knowledge and connections ‘in the business’ that we need. In other words: we have the idea GEF was looking for, GEF has the experience, structure and network we need.

The catch

But of course it’s not all just as simple as that. In order for us to work together and have that credibility, GEF needs to be the financially responsible partner. Because they have the means. We don’t. That also means that GEF will ultimately have a veto for decisions taken during the organization of the project.

Of course we will guard the concept and the overall vision of the project and GEF (and we) understand that this can only work if we both respect each other and work together on mutual trust. Only in extreme situations GEF needs to be able to say no. In the end it’s their wallet.

What this means for you and the whole community

In short: nothing will change for you. GEF understands that this project is one built on the help and support of the whole community and it’s open source vision. It will stay that way. Everybody can still contribute to the project in any way they want, wherever you live and whatever your qualities are. No changes are planned for the way you can get on board and all other parts of the concept developed so far will not be changed by this collaboration. Of course, when something is practical to change in the future, we will. But never without losing the project values out of sight.

The only visual change you might see is that, if it all goes through, in our communication it will become more visible that this project is done by Generation Europe in association with The WE Travel Foundation (that’s us).

We would like to hear your opinion!

Of course you don’t have to have an opinion, and we understand that this whole explanation of the situation barely touches the surface, but we would like to include you in this important decision for us. Do we get your support for “merging” with Generation Europe Foundation? What problems do you see ahead? Have a reason why we shouldn’t do it at all? Please comment here or give your opinion on our poll on Facebook. You could also just say how excited you are to see what this will bring ;).

Making yourself known is half the battle, some experts say. So, why not actually go to the lion’s den: Brussels! The capital city of Europe and Belgium, home of thousands of politicians, commissions, foundations and organizations that have something to do with the European Union. Maarten & Coen did exactly that. Read what they accomplished there!

CouchSurfing community

Coen arrived on Monday already, 1,5 days earlier than Maarten, so he attended the weekly CouchSurfing meetup in MONK alone, to share The Unity Express with all the local CouchSurfers. A group of about 15 to 20 people listened to the story and asked questions and had ideas how to get involved. Thanks, CouchSurfing community of Brussels, for the opportunity to tell the story in the midst of the meeting!

The HUB

On Wednesday we had a meeting with people from The HUB Brussels. HUB is a worldwide network of 26 (as of now) co-working spots for freelancers, entrepreneurs and change makers, with a growing network of more than 4000 professionals. Each HUB has a set of hosts, people that are going to help all the members of that HUB to accomplish their dreams and build businesses. Go check out their website, their working spaces are very cool, maybe you can join or create a HUB in your city!

After talking with the hosts of The HUB Brussels, we soon realized that we could help each other.

• The HUB has a big network of 4000+ professionals that can help us realize The Unity Express: we can be featured across the network and come into contact with people for funding, manpower or maybe something else…?
• Hosts from The HUB are trained “mediators” and have experience with connecting networks to each other. So, as soon as submitting projects to The Unity Express journey starts, The HUB could function as a help to accomplish your project on board. If you have a project to perform a theater play on board and you need decorations, The HUB can help you get that. Or if you need help with finding the right project, they are here for you too, even on board!
• There are 26 HUB locations across the world right now, and although they are not in the cities we pass through with the journey, we might visit those cities whenever we have a Team Meeting every other month. If we go to a city that has a HUB, we can arrange to use their co-working spot for free!

In return, we give The HUB a possibility to further spread their network across the 24 countries we come across and stop. We could even see it happen that a new HUB location will be born in a city we visit!

Generation Europe

“Generation Europe Foundation operates a two-way communication platform enabling exchanges of views between young people, the private and public sectors. We are experienced in providing educational information material covering a wide range of issues in 24 languages through a variety of media.” – source: Generation Europe Foundation website

We met the guys from GEF in the HUB (it quickly became our favorite place to come to work and have meetings ;)) to talk about a partnership. After explaining to each other what we are about, we discovered that a partnership would be very interesting. GEF can:

• Help us get City Coordinators in several cities that we stop, since they have a network of active volunteers in 36 countries in Europe, mostly excelling, active students or ex-students that want to be “the decision-makers of tomorrow”, as GEF puts it.
• Become a EU funding partner if necessary. For most of the EU funding programs you need 2 or more official co-organizers and GEF has experience with that.
• Give The Unity Express exposure in their newsletters and magazines, that is spread to their whole range of followers and members. They actually did already. In the future it could be more.

GEF was especially interested in the creative sessions that can be done on board. These sessions are sponsored slots in the program where a sponsor can bring in a question, hold a survey, discuss about a topic, or do a workshop on creating something for the sponsor. Of course these sessions are free to join or leave as you please, don’t worry :).

EACEA

Thanks to Maarten’s efforts of mailing the European Commission and the EACEA, the agency that takes care of all the structural funding programs within the EU, we managed to have a talk with representatives from the commission that deals with the funding programs. They were not the actual people that give a yes or no to fund requests, but they know everything about the programs.

It was an interesting talk, where new possibilities opened and known ones were questioned if it are the best ones to apply for. We certainly learned a lot and are now looking into the pro’s and cons. Difficult!

Bonus: EURail

We also talked to EURail Group again, one of our long-term sponsors. The meeting was in Utrecht, not Brussels, but it was directly after we returned to The Netherlands. EURail is going to do a lot for us, on top of what they already do for us:

• EURail Group will sponsor all 12 interrail passes for the Unity Express on Tour in October!
• They are also sponsoring 2 interrail tickets per MONTH (5-in-10 days or 10-in-22 days flexipass) to team members that need to travel somewhere (a team meeting for instance)
• They are seriously going to propose The Unity Express to their partners and funders to see if they can sponsor a wagon for the journey to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Interrail in 2012. That means EURail, or Interrail, could be one of the first to “adopt” one of the wagons of The Unity Express! More info somewhere at the end of June, beginning of July.

We, in return for the free Interrail tickets, will be blogging on the travel blog of EURail Group and of course provide them with all the information necessary to convince their partners of investing in us.

We think that this is one of our greatest achievements this past week, and we are very grateful of the opportunities EURail Group has given us. If you ever want to travel through Europe, be sure to consider the Interrail/EURail pass, it’s well worth the money!

We’ll be back…

In just under a week we met so many new people and got so many suggestions for organizations that we should contact, that we’ll sure be back in Brussels soon! The number of foundations and organizations that are doing something with tolerance or unity in Europe is simply amazing, and we have the idea that we know only the tip of the iceberg right now. We will of course share the dates of our return journey as soon as we know :).

Every other month the team of The Unity Express comes together to discuss strategy and to get to know each other better. From 7 to 14 April this meeting was in Tallinn, the beautiful hometown of Laura Saks, who is connected to the project as a legal advisor. Here’s a little summary of the progress that we’ve made that week – including photos and videos!

Tickets

We’ve made important decisions as to how we distribute the tickets. Here’s how you will be able to get a ticket for the journey in 2012:

There is so much going on in the project! A review of the past months, a sneak peak of what is coming up & an exciting announcement…

Team meetings

From 26 to 31st of January we had a team meeting in Preston, at Haitham’s place, a team member who is involved from the start.

The meeting over there was one of the most productive and fun ones we’ve had so far. We discussed the 2011/2012 strategy, reviewed the past year and evaluated expectations. It gave us valuable insights in how to deal with disappointments and how to keep everybody more involved.

The next meeting will be in Tallinn, from 8 – 13 April, at Laura’s place. And you’re invited too! We mean it, everybody can attend whatever meeting or activity we have. We love company and volunteers that want to meet us. Come over to Tallinn, there is plenty of room :). Meet other volunteers and really decide on important decisions, together. Just send us an E-mail or respond on Twitter or Facebook and we’ll send you all the travel info.

New website

If you think the current website is awesome, wait till we launch the new one! It’s going to feature a total redesign of the front page, a better navigation and new graphics. Please let us know what you think of it by giving comments on our experimental BetterMeans platform, or reply here.

Are you a designer, programmer, illustrator and/or WordPress expert and want to give us a hand with the new website? Then get in touch with the others, your help is more than welcome!

Crowdfunding

One decision we took in the last month was to start using crowdfunding. Crowdfunding basically means that a lot of people donate and get something in return. It’s a bit like sponsoring. The decision was made because The Unity Express is about the people in Europe and a symbol for unity. With crowdfunding, The Unity Express will be the train of us all, the achievement of a community, something we can be proud of and that unites us! Let’s make it happen, let’s make it something extraordinary, together!

We have some exciting plans for that, read more about a detailed explanation in a future blog post, or check out this Google Document to see the plans and help by giving comments or writing with all the others. Let’s do this together!

As a first step, we are preparing a trip to Münster, to the actual train for the journey. There we will make 360 degrees photos of the wagons, much like Google Street View. The guys from VR-Ireland.com are doing this for us for free! There is still a lot to be done, so if you like, you can help us organize the visit. Look at this BetterMeans workstream (sort of a to-do list where everybody can work together on items) to see where you can contribute! Be sure to login first to be able to suggest ideas and pick up tasks.

The VR-Train will be used for something very special and unique: once completed, you can walk through this virtual train, and click on every item in the train to “sponsor” them. Your name will literally be on all your sponsored items when we travel, so everybody sees that you made that possible! When you sponsor enough items, your funding acts as the chance to get on board the Unity Express. Yes, you read that right! This is your chance for a ticket.

Still a bit vague? Don’t worry: we will explain all the details in a later blog post. Right now we are figuring out how to make this fair and fun for everybody. If you want to think along and give input: please do so in this Google Document! We’d love to see what contributions and thoughts you have!

Other areas where you can help

This movement can’t exist without your help! There is a lot of stuff going on, and we could use all the input you have. Here are some suggestions:

• Stephan is working on finishing our 2011/2012 strategy. He’d love a couple of people that want to work together on it! See the Google Document to start right away.
• Laura is working on a list of all the items you could sponsor in the virtual train. Help her complete the list!
• We are looking for suggestions of companies that we can contact for a partnership. What companies would you want to see supporting the project? We would love to know! Reply here :)
• Some volunteers started a Cause for the movement over at Causes.com. Join too and invite some friends over so we can make a difference in Europe!

That’s it for now. As always, if you have a suggestion for a super cool initiative or you want to contribute in another way, feel free to contact someone within the team!

You want the Unity Express to become reality? You believe in its vision and goals and are ready to put your heart into the project? You always wanted to meet the Core Team of the Unity Express and wondered how to join this team of people crazy enough to take on the challenge? You already have experience in funding and sponsoring? You have fun communicating with agencies and companies? You have some ideas in your back pocket and can’t wait to try them out? Here’s your chance: apply for the vacant position in the Sponsoring Department!

If you always wondered how funding and sponsoring works or you already have some experience in the field but do not want to do a full-time job, we invite you to join us as a volunteer or apply for an internship! We are more than curious to hear about your crazy ideas how to crack the jackpot?

Interested? Just write us an E-mail or leave a massage in the Fundraising group on the Open Collaboration Platform.

What We Do at the Partnerships & Sponsoring Department:

Next year the Unity Express will travel 16,000 km with 360 people onboard within just 4 weeks. To get the train rolling we need about 1,5 Mio. EUR? We at the Partnerships and Sponsoring Department are raising that money!

YOU are our co-workers on a common vision, this is why we want no one to be left out for financial reasons. We aim to organize much more than “just” an adventure trip – a unifying train ride through Europe. This provides a huge potential for funding and sponsoring – as we are certainly not the only ones interested in a unified Europe and provide an excellent platform! To use that potential we need YOUR help in the Partnerships and Sponsoring Department!

This job involves a lot of different tasks: it starts with finding suitable funding agencies and sponsors, who then need to be contacted and certainly doesn’t end with agreements and contracts. The contact continues throughout the project up until afterwards when funding agencies want to know what exactly happened with the money they gave and sponsors invite us to tell their employees about the project they supported. Our job is about finding an agreement where both sides gain something and there are a lot of good reasons for sponsors to support us.

Two more strands of financing are planned for this project: one is EU-funding and the other crowd funding. The latter describes a strategy based on the simple sounding solution that if 1,5 million people give 1€ each we can run the train. As this is a question of communication, we closely cooperate with the Communication Department to involve this funding option.

Here’s what we can offer:

• As Core Team member, you can go on the journey for free, the full four weeks!
• You get to work on a challenging, international project, which will gain you tons of experience and stand out on your resume.
• You work with a friendly team of people who put their heart in the project and will embrace you as one of them
• As Core Team member, you join the Real Life meetings, which are on a regular basis in one of the home towns of the Core Team members. We try to refund travel costs as much as we can.
• For people working more than 20 hours a week on the project, there is a good compensation in living costs possible.

Here’s what we ask for:

• Commitment to the project and the team. Getting involved in the Unity Express core team means to share and to support. This involves our weekly team meeting via skype, a bimonthly real life core team meeting and just helping out where help is needed.
• Work independently. We are all growing with this project. If you’re looking for a challenging job where you will learn with every day on the project, this is it. We require core team members to organize their strategies, tasks and working hours. We all need to think along with the big picture to make this happen.
• Creativity! If there’s something the Unity Express isn’t, then it is a standard project. Making this real will need all our creativity and ability to think different.

You recognize yourself in this and are interested in this position? We are looking forward to your application to sponsoring@unityexpress.eu and would love to schedule a Skype-meeting with you. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us. Deadline for applications is the 6^th of February 2011.

We are looking forward to your application!