The project “Volunteering Management Lab” was held between the 19th and the 26th of September in Poznan, Poland and gathered 25 participants from 5 countries: Macedonia, Czech Republic, Germany, Portugal and Poland. The project aimed to increase the skills of youth workers who work with volunteers in order to strengthen the organizations and to support the development of volunteering and volunteers. In each of these countries, volunteer management systems are different. Also the legal conditions of volunteering differ, as well as the state of democracy and civil society at large. Working in such a diverse group gave us a chance to capture volunteering as a phenomenon of international and European level. This allowed us to compare ways of working with volunteers and develop universal tools for managing volunteers.
The specific objectives that we have followed during these 7 days were:
- Improving the competence of working with volunteers on motivation, communication and conflict resolution;
- Improving the competence for effective evaluation of volunteer work, its development and how they can take advantage of existing skills;
- Improving the competence of promotion of volunteering, and especially the promotion of competences acquired by volunteers through online tools;
- Exchange of experience between the project partners, showing the different types of volunteering with special emphasis on intergenerational volunteering;
- Creating a toolbox for organizations working with volunteers.
I liked the most the fact that I have learnt about new applications that will be useful for every organization and volunteer, and that I understood properly the meaning of volunteering. This experience helped me a lot in terms of how to improve myself and how to make a greater contribution in volunteering.
Teodora Mladenovska