Training Course "HandinHand: Learning through Volunteering”

The benefits of volunteering are enormous to an individual volunteer, her/his family and community. Aside from helping with college applications and resumes, volunteering can also have a life-changing effect on their personal life. One fantastic thing that volunteering can offer is a new understanding of volunteers’ own abilities. Whether they are planning a huge event or making flyers for a small gathering, every task can help them understand how to accomplish something new. Volunteers can learn important skills like how to plan a budget or how to supervise and manage. Or, they can take time to enhance skills they already have by spending more time actively using them. An added side effect of volunteering is that it gives volunteers an opportunity to try out possible careers and opportunities, depending in which department they volunteer: fundraising, PR, project management, youth clubs, event management, etc. 

Though volunteers may not have any idea what they want to pursue now, volunteering can help them solidify their interests. It’s also a great way to network. Sometimes, giving back can give volunteers a great sense of fulfilment. Though their skills and help might improve the local community, they can improve their own self-esteem and confidence by accomplishing something they never thought they could.

How will the TC look like?

The whole programme of the TC is developed based on non-formal education and learning by doing methods. The first part of the TC will serve as some kind of the ice-breaker, will enable participants to meet each other, get introduced with Youthpass certificate, set their own and group learning expectations, observe possible challenges and obstacles they might face during the activity, but also their contributions to the TC topics, to examine the principles and values of volunteering and finally to share realities about their volunteering background and volunteering programmes in their organisations and countries.

The second unit will concentrate more on TC activity’s general topic – interconnection between NFE and volunteering: starting from exploring basic concepts and values of non-formal education, experiential learning and relevance of NFE for volunteering. Participants will explore how an organisation can support volunteers and their learning process; and also, how to incorporate NFE in volunteer programmes, in volunteers' job description and in monitoring and evaluation of volunteers.

Throughout this process, participants will develop and adjust the volunteering programme of their organisations to the learning needs of their (present and future) volunteers. In the final part, participants will explore and share examples of good practice, explore the Erasmus+ programme and reflect on their own learning during the TC.
 

Aim and objectives of the TC

This project focuses on the needs of our volunteers, especially on their learning, as most of the volunteers are youngsters and they will benefit from using basic concepts and values of non-formal education. We need and want to develop the management of volunteers to be based not just on our organisational need, but also on the needs of our volunteers; as we strive to focus more on incorporating non-formal learning in our volunteer management.

Objectives of the Training Course:

• To learn about Youthpass and new 8 key competences
• To raise participants’ ability to identify and pursue their learning needs
• To achieve a common understanding of volunteering
• To identify motivating factors for volunteers and their needs in order to address them appropriately
• To share experiences about volunteering programmes and volunteer management in our countries/communities
• To achieve a common understanding of NFE, self-directed learning, life-long learning and experiential learning
• To achieve a common understanding of the relevance of NFE for volunteers
• To identify how to support non-formal learning of volunteers in our organisations
• To identify and implement non-formal learning in volunteer programme and volunteers’ job description
• To identify how to incorporate NFE in the monitoring and evaluation of volunteers
• To develop a proactive plan/strategy in order to implement NFE in our organisations after the TC
• To explore Erasmus+ opportunities to promote learning of volunteers
• To raise participants’ ability to self-assess their learning achievement

Pre-training course tasks for participants/preparation for the training course and follow-up requirement

For the preparation of the activity, participants need to:

• assess how topics of volunteering were dealt with so far in their local communities (how youth and general public perceive volunteering); 
• assess what are the realities of volunteering in our communities and countries, how many young people are volunteering and in which kind of activities, etc.
• bring with them a draft of the existing volunteer programme of their organisations, existing volunteers’ job description and info about how monitoring and evaluation of volunteers are done.

Follow-up: 
Participants from each country should organise 1 multiplication meeting/workshop after they return home from the TC, where they will share acquired knowledge, information and competencies with other youth workers and volunteers. These meetings can be organised as online events. 

COVID-19 INFORMATION: 

The organisers will follow the development of the ongoing pandemic and communicate all necessary information. The health and safety recommendations will be implemented: masks will be used when needed and necessary sanitising equipment will be provided. 
Costs of necessary tests will be covered by organisers (receipts required!). 
More information will be provided to the selected participants.