Participant Recruitment, Selection and Consent

Approximately 4 months before the start of your short course, you should open applications to potential participants. To help you with this, below is information on all stages of the participant selection process, from creating your application form to assessing the responses in line with UWCs selection criteria, and notifying applicants of their results.

Application Process

The application form will often be the first formal contact that a candidate and their parents have with your short course and therefore it is useful to include:

  • A brief introduction to UWC, your short course and the selection process
  • The conditions of application (for example eligibility criteria, closing date, return address etc.)
  • A list of the documentation required (for example statement of interest, references etc.)
  • An outline of how your short course will manage financial matters (if appropriate)
  • A note on how data from the form will be handled/used/shared (data protection)

What to Include

The information required from a candidate should include:

  • Personal information
  • School information (if applicable)
  • A school report and transcript of current academic standing and examination/test results (many short courses find that this kind of information is also helpful for visa processing should the candidate be selected)
  • Information on their life and interests (any community service, sports, clubs etc.)
  • An outline of their interest in UWC and the short course theme
  • Questions that help you get to know the candidate (such as 'what do you consider your best three qualities or accomplishments', 'what is your favourite book/film' etc)
  • A personal statement (150-300 words is recommended)
  • A brief description of any physical or mental health concerns
  • Parental consent and contact details for the parent/guardian
  • References from teachers or others involved in the candidate’s school or social life (if appropriate)

Below are examples of application forms developed by UWC Costa Rica for a previous short course.

Leaders for Change, Costa Rica, 2015

Leaders for Change participant application.pdf

(Re)Defining Equality, Austria, 2018

participant application_2018 - Lea Arzberger.pdf

Which Medium to Use

You should think about whether you will develop downloadable application forms which candidates could either print, fill out, scan and email back to you, or fill out online, or via an online interactive form. Online application forms have the following benefits:

  • Provide a simpler, more efficient process and reduce paperwork for the candidate and your team
  • Send automatic emails to candidates with for example receipt acknowledgements or reminders
  • Provide statistical analysis of application data
  • Store data
  • Provide remote access for other coordinators to review and evaluate applications

Most short course organisers opt for an interactive online form, using a platform such as Google Forms.

Application forms should be accessible and easily understandable so that as diverse a range of applicants as possible can complete the paperwork/online form. Application forms should be designed in a way that is inclusive and allow applicants to accurately describe their lives (e.g. gender). The application form should include options for applicants to inform you of their legal/medical sex in addition to gender identity, and give their preferred first name if this is different from their legal first name.

Scholarship Provision

Short course applicants often require financial assistance in order to attend. There are various ways of deciding who receives financial aid.

You could first publicise the application form and when a certain number have been received, you may then evaluate and rank these, send out a financial assessment form to each of these, and provide scholarships to the highest ranking candidates who need them.

Alternatively, you could publicise both the application form and a financial assessment form simultaneously and ask those who need it to apply for financial assessment and submit both forms together.

Whichever method you decide to use, you must comply with local data protection regulation laws. The law surrounding consent, age restrictions on data which can be shared about a person and what actually is considered data to be protected (i.e. whether postal data is included, or the law just applies to digital data) differs between region to region and country to country. Make sure you know what regulations apply to you and that you apply these to all personal data you hold about participants and your team (such as photography consent, whether you need parental consent for your participants if they're under a certain age etc.). In addition, make sure you securely hold personal data such as that provided in a financial assessment form. This information must not be stored as an open access document.

A very thorough template financial assessment form is provided below - please simplify and adapt this to make it suitable for your short course. To do so, please make a copy and edit in your personal Drive, do not edit the below version of the form.

Financial Assessment Form

Hints and Tips

The following hints and tips offer advice on what to consider when reviewing an application form and issues to note on the application form for follow up later in the selection process:

  • Demographic information on the application forms is useful not as part of the assessment but as a tool for understanding a candidate’s context and opportunity
  • Use questions that allow you to begin to get to know the candidate (a process which of course will continue throughout the selection process)
  • Check for quality and originality in the application form - is there any hint that someone else might have written it?
  • Watch out for ‘over positivity’, look for a sense of authenticity in the answers and use references to check authenticity. References are also useful in understanding more about a candidate’s context and opportunity.
  • In what ways does a genuine motivation for applying to a UWC short course come through?
  • Considering types of extra-curricular activities and the commitment shown to these activities within a candidate’s context and opportunity. If there are few extra-curricular activities, are there clues as to why that might be?
  • If your course allows second applications and a candidate has applied previously what has changed in the last year?
  • Remember that experience among the applicant pool of completing an application will vary; some students will be more familiar with completing an application form than others.

In addition, you should set goals for the number of applications you hope to have received and places you hope to have allocated at certain milestones leading up to the course start. If you seem to be hitting these milestones and it is clear that you will fill all of your available participant places, that's a great sign. If you're not receiving as many applications, or a poorer quality of applications than you anticipated, review whether it is still viable to run your short course this year, or whether it's better to postpone it for the coming year. If this is looking to be the case, you may want to look again at your marketing and promotional activities, and look at other channels before you decide to postpone.

UWC Selection Criteria

UWC International's selection criteria is consistent across the UWC movement:

● Intellectual curiosity and motivation, demonstrated by a genuine urge to learn about the world around oneself and the ability to recognise the details and grasp the breadth of issues (for example global and local concerns) involved in any given topic and to analyse them thoroughly.

● Active commitment, measured by the ability to develop and readiness to reflect, question and confront one’s own values, to measure one’s behaviour within family and community against one’s values, and to act on one’s own beliefs accordingly and responsibly.

● Social competence, measured by the ability and readiness to make contact with other people, to interact respectfully with them, to work together with them in a team and to achieve solutions; the ability to express oneself adequately in different situations and to different people.

● Resilience, personal responsibility and integrity, measured by the ability to look after oneself physically and emotionally during the challenging and transforming experience that a UWC offers; the personal motivation to adhere to UWC’s common moral and ethical principles, a sense of humility and an ability to listen and value another person’s opinion and experience.

● Motivation for UWC, expressed in passion, ability and serious incentive to contribute to and actively promote UWC’s values.

Short Course Core Selection Criteria can be viewed below - please study this before advertising your short course and selecting participants.

Selection Policy_ Short Course Core Selection Criteria.pdf

Participant Recruitment Collaboration

To increase the diversity of applicants, UWC International encourages organisers to contact relevant local organisations which reach diverse communities. They may be able to promote your short course among their networks. There have been cases, too, where they provide scholarships for their candidates to attend the course.

UWC International also encourages you to collaborate with your local national committee(s) to recruit participants. The national committee will have a database of candidates who passed all of their assessments and selection criteria to attend a UWC school or college but narrowly missed out - they may be great candidates for your course.

UWC International is working with national committees to promote short courses as a professional alternative offering to UWC school or college attendance to and to publicise them to candidates who do narrowly miss out on being selected for a school or college.

Evaluating Application Forms

In planning how you will review and evaluate your application forms it is important to:

  • Understand UWC International’s core selection criteria and guidelines on how to use them (provided further down in this section)
  • Establish your selection criteria and a process for evaluating the application form
  • Consider what notes/comments are appropriate to write on an application form. Other organisers/facilitators may want or need to refer back to decisions or comments made on the application forms later in the selection process
  • Review the application of every candidate who meets the eligibility criteria
  • Ensure that each application form is read and evaluated by more than one person
  • Check consistency if different groups of people are reviewing different groups of application forms
  • Brief and/or train your team whom are reviewing and evaluating application forms

Participant Fundraising

If you are selecting participants on the basis of an agreement that they fundraise a percentage of the course fee (i.e. you provide an 80% scholarship and they must fundraise the final 20%), it is good practice to provide guidance to these candidates, to aid their fundraising efforts.

Below is the fundraising toolkit based on a template provided to UWC International by the organising team of the Turkey 2013 short course, Living Together - Navigating Common Grounds.

Fundraising toolkit for participants.doc

Visas and Airport Logistics

Obtaining visas for international participants can take longer than anticipated. There have been courses in the past where this has stopped a selected applicant from attending a short course. So, it's important to start the process early and use your contacts to make the process smoother. Things to think about are:

  • Expending certificates
  • Contacts with embassies
  • Contingency plan - do you have a plan in place for that applicant if their visa application is rejected? Can you partner with a short course organiser and nominate them to that course instead?

When it comes to arrival day, there will likely be a range of arrival times, to one or more airports, especially if you have recruited international applicants. It's advised that you:

  • Visit the airport before hand and get to know some of the staff and customs authorities. Inform them of your group size, the nationalities you're expecting and when they will be arriving. Build those relationships early on.
  • Have a plan in place to manage these different arrival times - know the flight numbers of all participants so you can track their journey, and have a designated meeting point for everyone (International Arrivals).
  • Have a contingency plan in place - a back-up driver or the option of getting public transport, for example.

Acceptance and Welcome Pack

Once you've received applications and selected successful participants in accordance with the Core Selection Criteria, you should notify the successful and the unsuccessful candidates and provide details of the scholarship which they may or may not have received. A good way to do this is via email, attaching a welcome pack. This pack should tell participants the basic information which they need prior to coming to the short course, such as:

  • An introduction from the main course organiser (and could include photos and profiles of the core team)
  • An outline of the outcomes the participant can expect
  • Basic venue information (i.e. bedroom set-up, security and insurances)
  • Drug, alcohol and smoking policy
  • Internet use policy
  • Code of conduct (you may want to have this as an attachment which participants should sign and return to you)
  • What money to bring
  • Packing list (i.e. what clothes and footwear to bring, any cultural dress, any toiletries such as sunscreen, whether towels are provided or not, a reminder to bring prescription medication, camera, specialist equipment such as hiking boots or a headlamp etc.)
  • What not to pack list (i.e. cigarettes, valuable items etc.)
  • Day-by-day itinerary
  • Catering and who to contact re. dietary requirements (make it clear that participants who have dietary requirements need to make you aware as soon as possible)
  • Travel and medical policy (and possibly request proof of cover)
  • How to get there (include local airports, information on local train or bus timetables, whether there will be a vehicle to pick-up participants)
  • Emergency contact numbers
  • Map of the surrounding area

Example Welcome Packs are provided below for inspiration.

Do remember, all promotional materials for your short course, including a welcome or orientation pack should comply with the UWC brand guidelines.

Global Leadership Programme, Wales, 2018

AC GLP Welcome Pack Final Version.pdf

Leaders for Change, Costa Rica, 2015

Copy of Orientation Guide for Participants - Short Course 2015.pdf

Consent and Evidence

When notifying candidates of their successful application and issuing the Welcome Pack, you should request the various consents needed from participants. Some jurisdictions require consent to be an "opt-in" process and cannot be "opt-out", therefore we recommend that all consent policies are on an opt-in basis.

You need consent from both the participant and their parent/guardian where they are under 18 years of age, and therefore considered a minor.

Consent which you need to obtain:

  • Media: photographs and video footage can be used by you and by UWC international (such as on the UWC International website, your website, social media, in educational and promotional material) and photographs and video footage can be used by partner organisations.
  • Participants who do not have written consent need to be aware that they too have a responsibility to remove themselves from circumstances where photos are being taken, i.e. group photos, and make the photographer aware that they do not want their photo taken.
  • Code of conduct: participants should, as a prerequisite to their place on the short course being secure, agree to abide by the code of conduct for your short course.

Evidence which you should obtain includes:

  • Medical history
  • Details of any prescription medication and day-to-day medical needs
  • Travel insurance
  • Medical insurance

You should set a deadline of when you need the consents signed and returned along with the evidence, and by which means you would like to receive them (i.e. email or post - in which case an address needs to be provided).

A template consent form is provided below. Please make a copy of this and personalise it to your short course before sending on to participants.

Consent Form

You may wish to adapt this media consent further and provide further details of where the imagery/video footage may be used. UWC International asks that you always include UWC International in the image and video consent. An example form, provided by (Re)defining Equality, is provided below:

media consent - Lea Arzberger.pdf