“Impact Makers: Designing volunteering that matters”

This training course offers youth workers and NGO practitioners the opportunity to deepen their understanding of quality volunteering and to strengthen their capacity to design, coordinate, and improve volunteering programmes that create real impact in local communities. Through non-formal education and experiential learning approaches, participants will explore the foundations of volunteering, including key values, principles, types of volunteering, and volunteer motivation, while reflecting on what makes volunteering meaningful for both volunteers and host organisations.

The course places strong emphasis on the role of organisations and coordinators in creating supportive and well-structured volunteering experiences. Participants will examine volunteers’ rights and responsibilities, as well as organisational responsibilities, and explore how ethical standards, clear communication, and realistic expectations contribute to volunteer satisfaction and long-term engagement. Special attention will be given to understanding why organisations need volunteers, how to assess real needs, and how to translate those needs into well-designed volunteering opportunities.

Going beyond theory, the training course is highly participatory and practice-oriented. Participants will take part in interactive exercises, group work, and hands-on workshops focused on attracting and recruiting volunteers, designing training and orientation processes, providing supervision and support, and evaluating volunteering programmes for continuous improvement. The programme also includes opportunities to exchange experiences across countries, and develop concrete volunteering programme ideas and action plans that participants can implement in their own communities after the training. By the end of the course, participants will have strengthened their competences in volunteer management, developed practical tools and templates, and gained strategies to ensure volunteering is well-organised, sustainable, and truly impactful.

The training course is developed in line with Youth Goal 9: Space and Participation for All and contributes to:

Ensuring young people can adequately influence all areas of society and all parts of the decision-making processes, from agenda setting to implementation, monitoring and evaluation through youth-friendly and accessible mechanisms and structures, ensuring that policies respond to the needs of young people.

Ensuring equal access to everyday decision making for all young people from different backgrounds.

Increasing youth participation and thus equal representation in the electoral process as well as in elected bodies and other decision-making organs at all levels of society.

The training course is grounded in non-formal education principles and experiential learning approaches. The programme is designed to equip participants with the knowledge, skills, and practical tools needed to understand quality volunteering, organise meaningful volunteer engagement, and develop volunteering programmes that respond to real community needs and create sustainable impact.

The initial phase of the training focuses on building a safe and supportive learning environment, fostering trust among participants, and creating strong group cohesion. During these first days, participants will explore the foundations of volunteering by reflecting on its values, principles, and different forms, while also examining volunteer motivation and expectations. This phase supports participants in connecting personal experiences with broader organisational realities and understanding why volunteering matters for communities and civil society.

As the training progresses, participants will deepen their understanding of the roles, rights, and responsibilities within volunteering, both from the volunteer and organisational perspective. They will strengthen their competences in analysing needs and designing quality volunteering programmes, with a particular focus on structuring meaningful tasks, ensuring ethical standards, and creating supportive volunteer journeys. Special attention is given to recruitment and outreach strategies, volunteer training and orientation processes, and effective communication and supervision practices that contribute to long-term engagement and satisfaction.

In the later stages of the programme, participants will focus on improving programme quality through volunteer support systems and evaluation. They will explore how to monitor volunteering experiences, collect feedback, and assess the effectiveness of volunteering programmes in a realistic and practical way. Participants will then develop concrete volunteering programme ideas and local action plans tailored to their own 

communities and organisations, supported by peer feedback and exchange of practices. The course concludes with a collective reflection, evaluation of learning outcomes, and recognition of participants’ achievements through the Youthpass ceremony.

Short description:

By the end of the training, participants will have strengthened their understanding of quality volunteering and volunteer management, developed practical tools for designing, recruiting, training and supporting volunteers, and gained skills to create meaningful volunteering programmes that respond to real community needs and generate sustainable impact.

Objectives:

• To strengthen participants’ understanding of volunteering as a value-based practice, including key principles, types of volunteering, and the motivations that drive meaningful engagement.
• To explore the roles, rights, and responsibilities of volunteers and host organisations, and to clarify ethical standards and expectations that ensure safe and high-quality volunteering experiences.
• To develop participants’ competences in identifying real community and organisational needs, and using needs analysis as a foundation for designing relevant and impactful volunteering programmes.
• To equip participants with practical tools and methods for attracting, recruiting, training, and orienting volunteers, ensuring clear roles, preparation, and long-term engagement.
• To build participants’ capacity to support and supervise volunteers through effective communication, mentoring, coordination, and quality assurance mechanisms.
• To strengthen participants’ skills in evaluating volunteering programmes, using feedback and reflection to improve volunteer experience, organisational impact, and sustainability.
• To support participants in developing concrete volunteering programme ideas and action plans for their local communities, enabling them to transfer learning outcomes into their own organisational practice.