Promotion and Recruitment for Voluntary Services

Description of the tool

* Four participants having experience in recruiting and working with the target group need to be selected first (if none available, ask for volunteers and foresee more time for the preparation). These four are given the task of “convincing” youth workers or young people to take part in voluntary service program. During the preparation, they note down their arguments on paper. The rest of the group is divided into groups of six.
Each group has its own profile:
- young people with physical disabilities
- youth workers from a project working with the physically disabled
- young people from socially excluded backgrounds
- youth workers from a project working with the socially excluded

The groups are given 15 minutes to get into their role and try to think of arguments why they should not take part in a voluntary service. Each group has an observer to take notes. After 15 minutes, one recruiter joins each group. Their task is to try to promote the programme and to convince the group to take part. The observer notes down what approaches seemed to work or what techniques seemed to be helpful during the discussion.
After 15 minutes, the recruiters steps out of their role and the observer gives feedback to the group. The feedback from the observer is used to try to reply to the following questions:
How do we persuade these young people that voluntary sercvice is a good idea for them?
How do we convince youth or social workers to invest their time and energy in the voluntary service programme?