How does the voluntary engagement of young people enhance their active citizenship and solidarity?

Young people, who participate on a voluntary basis, provide a service, that benefits the individual volunteer and society alike. The individual volunteer benefits from a feeling of belonging and contributing to society and learns skills and competencies, that are beneficial to life and labour market opportunities. The society benefits from the volunteer, who acts as a responsible citizen helping others in their community and becomes part of the system for renewal of civil society as a whole. At a European level this argument is then widened to needs of a European civil society, developing a sense of European citizenship and creating the European knowledge based society. This seminar will take the opportunity to critically reflect on this common sense belief of volunteering using the evidence from research to develop a more precise understanding of the links between volunteering and national and European citizenship, social inclusion and the development of the 'knowledge society'. The seminar will also examine the evidence of access to volunteering, exploring barriers to participation and will also evaluate the quality and impact of the experiences from a voluntary activity. The seminar takes place in the context of creation of common objectives on voluntary activities in the youth field.