- Project: HandiHand: Learning through Volunteering
- Project duration: 1.5.2020. – 31.5.2021.
- Project reference: 2020-1-DE04-KA105-019428
- Grant amount: 22.260,00 €
- Donor: JUGEND für Europa, Erasmus+ German NA
Summary:
All of the partner organisations in this project rely on volunteers for implementation of their programme and activities in order to achieve their goals. Without volunteers we couldn’t carry out all of the activities that we do in our local communities. However, we in our organisations are sometimes focused on the achieving our goals through our activities and we could focus more on our volunteers. They are giving motivation and new energy to our organisations but are also inclined to stress and we face fluctuation of volunteers. Employed staff has more clear benefit as they are payed, but volunteers also can benefit from volunteering. 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. 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 they skills and help might improve local community, they can improve their own self-esteem and confidence by accomplishing something they never thought they could. With this project we want to focus 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 management of volunteers not just on our organisational need but also on the needs of our volunteers, as we need to focus more on incorporating non-formal learning in our volunteer management.
Goals of this project are:
– To learn about Youthpass and new 8 key competences
– To raise participants’ ability to identify and pursue their learning needs
– To achieve 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 common understanding of NFE, self-directed learning, life
-long learning and experiential learning
– To achieve common understanding on 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 monitoring and evaluation of volunteers
– To develop 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-asses their learning achievement