‘Pathways to rights: empowering young Europeans’ – Volonteurope conference in Brussels

With youth unemployment rates soaring in large parts of Europe too often, young people are left out of the processes that shape their futures. Participation, social action and active citizenship are pathways to the social empowerment of young people. The aim of the EuroVIP project is to use volunteering to help young people to successfully participate in the labour market, and thus work towards the professional empowerment of young people. In times of unprecedented societal and labour market challenges, and when the civic space is shrinking, we need to find new ways of participating and work to strengthen successful initiatives.

Volonteurope’s 26th annual conference will be an occasion to share practices and information around participation as a pathway to accessing rights and strengthening social cohesion.

Volonteurope is an international network promoting volunteering, active citizenship and social justice in Europe and beyond. Its UK member Volunteering Matters will use the occasion of the conference to present the EuroVIP portfolio and offer support for using it to volunteers from other member organisations.

The conference: ‘Pathways to rights: empowering young Europeans’ will bring together young people to discuss, share experience and learn from others about ways in which they engage with civil society organisations to create a better and fairer society that will lead to social justice.

The conference will be held on 30-31 October 2017 in Brussels. Besides speeches by Oonagh Aitken, the chairwoman of Volonteurope, Julie Ward MEP of the S&D Group in the European Parliament and Pavel Trantina, Section president in the European Economic and Social Committee the conference will host a variety of presentations by participants from across the European Union about the power of volunteering to guarantee the access to fundamental rights. A comprehensive report about this vital issue authored by Volonteurope will conclude the conference.

24 October 2017 News No comments yet

Portfolio for Volunteering experiences – Based on the ProfilPASS used for the first time in the Scotland

‘Portfolio for Volunteering experiences – Based on the ProfilPASS’, a major output of the EUROVIP project, has been put to a first successful test in Scotland.

In summer 2017 EUROVIP project partner Volunteering Matters gathered a group of volunteers from their Full-time Volunteering programme in their Edinburgh offices. European projects coordinator Pieter Baeten and Volunteer Manager Jen Finnimore guided the participating volunteers through the comprehensive material of the ‘Portfolio for Volunteering experiences – Based on the ProfilPASS’ to help them recognise the skills and competencies acquired in their volunteering roles and how to use them in their professional career.

The ‘Portfolio for Volunteering experiences – Based on the ProfilPASS’ is a built on a three step structure. In the first step participants reflect on the tasks and activities of their volunteering role. Based on this reflection volunteers assess the qualities and skills specific to these activities in the second step. The last step involves translating these qualities and skills into competencies relevant in the professional recruitment process.

Prior to the training all volunteers present in the training indicated that they had never thought of using the skills and competencies from their volunteering roles in a professional context. However, in the feedback on ‘Portfolio for Volunteering experiences – Based on the ProfilPASS’ they unanimously emphasised the usefulness of such a course. Further feedback about the course material itself was attentively received by Pieter and Jen and fed back to the authors. These insights were incorporated into a second training session in September delivered by Volunteering Matters in London.

24 September 2017 News No comments yet

EuroVIP training for Volunteering Matters

Volunteering Matters EuroVIP Training.

A short while ago, we had the pleasure to announce the publication of the Portfolio for Volunteering experiences – Based on the ProfilPASS as part of our EuroVIP project.

In the coming months, the Volonteurope team will be providing training opportunities for Volunteer mangers to become acquainted with the use of the Portfolio.

On April 13, we will be training the Full Time Volunteering, Employee Volunteering and Positive Futures London teams of our hosting organisation Volunteering Matters in the use of this tool. The goal of this training is to make volunteering mangers acquainted with the use of the tool and enables them with the opportunity to raise feedback on its use.

An additional training opportunity for other volunteering organisations is foreseen in one of the upcoming NNIVIA meetings, of which we will keep you updated.

10 April 2017 News, Events No comments yet

Volunteering in the UK

According to the National Council For Voluntary Organisations’ (NCVO) UK Civil Society Almanac 2016 42% of the UK population over the age of 16 undertook a formal volunteering engagement at least once a year. Formal volunteering is considered giving help to giving unpaid help through a group, club or organisation. Since 2001, this number is more or less stable with the rates of adults formally volunteering at least once in the last year continue to be within five percentage points of each other.

(more…)

Sticky | 10 March 2017 Resources No comments yet
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