IMPACT OF VOLUNTEERING ON PROFESSIONNAL SKILLS AND INTEGRATION: PRACTICE AND EXPERIENCE SHARING

IMPACT OF VOLUNTEERING ON PROFESSIONNAL SKILLS AND INTEGRATION:
PRACTICE AND EXPERIENCE SHARING

OUTLINE

Volunteering is a benefic experience for young people. It helps them to discover work environment and develop themselves.
However, we do not specifically know how it impacts their skills, how it enhances their skills, how it makes them more employable.
This is the reason of this strategic partnership project.
It is built with several organizations from different European countries, leading by the Departmental Youth Centers’ Federation and the Youth and Sports Ministry’s Local Office.

AIMS:

- To support volunteering experience sharing between youth workers and develop their practices
- To conduct an observation on different kind of commitment in Europe and analyse the impact and benefits of volunteering on youths’ life (key competencies, professional skills…)
- To enhance partnerships for youth exchange, international volunteering and cooperation

PROJECT

This project will enable to set up an observatory of the youths’ social and professional trajectories. It will help to analyze the impact of the different kind of volunteering existing in the various countries involved.

This work will be done by the youth workers with young people.
Indeed, as the project is linked to an international volunteering development program, young people will be involved in the process.
French young people will be volunteering abroad (in partners’ countries) which will create a basis for the study.
They will take part to the survey by identifying the types of volunteering and sharing experience with their foreign peers. Young volunteers form each country will be interviewed for the research.

Several one-week workshop seminar will take place in each country to work on the research.
For each one, young people from partners’ countries will participate with their youth workers.
The workshops will gather partners in order to offer opportunity to youth workers and their young people to exchange on the different way to get involved in social life:

- What are the different kind of volunteering existing in partners’ countries?
- Which field offer opportunities to be a volunteer?
- Who are volunteers (age, gender, social class…)?
- Do volunteers easily get into work market?

All those questions will be the fundament for the reflexion and exchange.
A focus will be made on the country hosting the workshop-seminar.
Young volunteers will give their experience and contribute to the volunteering impacts analysis.

At the end, partners are looking for means to improve their practices, develop and promote volunteering as well as sharing with other organisation the results of the strategic partnership. Indeed, it is important to highlight benefits of volunteering in terms of skills, of way of life, of open-mindedness, of citizen behaviour…

The strategic partnership will last from February 2016 to August 2018.

PARTNERS:

Several association are interested in the project. They are working on the adaptation of the process to their own organization. At the moment are counted as participants:

- Kayseri Governership, Turkey
- Sadala Hoolekande Ühing, Estonia
- Tineri in Europa, Romania
- Democratic Youth Movement, Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Sports without borders, Austria

VOLUNTEERING ASSIGNMENT THEMATIC STUDIED:

1. HEALTH
Promotion of healthy living:
- Organisation of meetings enabling the construction of prevention projects based on exchanges with participants
- Campaign of awareness of sport as a vector of physical and mental well-being
- Intervention on balanced diet and the means to adopt good habits (educational-shared garden, week of taste...)
- Participation to thematic surveys and nutritional monitoring of a territory

Prevention and information:
- Organization of workshops and events on addictions awareness and risk behaviour
- Participation to the design of communication tools and educational materials for prevention of addictions

2. CULTURE AND LEISURE
Promoting access to culture
- Conception of events in non-cultural places (exhibition, slam...)
- Local cultural events communication relay
- Participation to the realization and films’ screenings
- Development of libraries’ alternative systems ("book-crossing")

Support for socio-cultural activities and leisure
- Participation to the implementation of cultural events (festivals, concerts...)
- Organisation of meetings - exchanges between artists and public
- Enhancement of associations’ actions of the territory

3. SPORT

Assistance to the discovery of sporting practices
- Discovery of physical activity and sport activities workshop setting
- Proposal for a small original sporting events
- Initiation workshop around major sporting events
- Assistance to the realization of a diagnostic - analysis of practice in a territory

Promotion of respect in and through sport
- Participation to the creation of interactive communication on sports’ values
- Workshops of awareness to the fight against violence in sport
- Promoting an eco-citizen approach in the conduct of activities
- Participation to the design of a tool of rules and codes of conduct (charters...)

4. ENVIRONMENT

Awareness of biodiversity
- Participation to the creation of educational tools for presentation of natural areas
- Awareness events to the problems of fragility and safeguarding of protected sites
- Observation and identification of fauna and flora as part of a diagnosis
- Participation to the management of measures of nature and territories’ protection

Awareness of civic responsibility and environmental issues
- Intervention on soft and alternative transport modes
- Participation to the production of tools promoting good practices (fair trade, rational consumption)
- Contribution to cleaning, preservation and development of common spaces
- Awareness of environmental, health and economic of pollution impacts

5. MEMORY AND CITIZENSHIP

Do live the common memory
- Compendium of intergenerational local record to constitute transmission media
- Creation of educational paths of territory discovery
- Proposal of animation around the story of a place

Promotion of heritage
- Help in the organization of historic local events valorization
- Contribution to access to the local monuments

Promote citizen participation
- Census of local initiatives carried by citizens to develop them
- Participation to solidarity actions (collections of funds, sorting, clothes distribution…)
- Promote the different forms of volunteering and promote their virtues
- Intervention of awareness-raising on the law and justice through fun media to young audiences
- Participation to the organization of time for exchanges between people for consultation and construction of proposal

6. INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND HUMANITARIAN ACTION

Promotion of international solidarity
- Proposal of educational tools, exhibitions of humanitarian actions
- Accompanying actions to achieve reports
- Relay of projects of solidarity campaigns

Awareness of international issues
- Design of media communication and workshops promoting the importance of knowledge of peoples and cultures
- Promotion of devices and forms of international engagement