Encouragement and facilitation of voluntary
work
Presentation
Voluntary work in social institutions, associations and initiatives becomes more and more important all over Europe. The effect of this is that more and more members of the paid staff in the organisations mentioned above have to co-operate closely with volunteers. More frequently they are engaged in encouraging and facilitating volunteering in their field. A new profession is developing in which encouragement and facilitation of voluntary work is the main task. (In the next sentence examples for this new profession in Germany are mentioned). All these staff members have to do their job almost without having been prepared for this in their original professional training. At the same time, the supply with continuous training courses in this field is low. The project aims at developing a comprehensive continuous training curriculum for paid staff members working with volunteers or promoting voluntary work. The issues and qualifications to be dealt with will be developed in a European perspective already in the first steps. Organisations from France, Austria and Germany are working together in the development of the curriculum. Each country takes extra care of a specific professional profile. The experiences and qualifications of the paid staff already working in this field will be considered as well as the demands of volunteers for support by paid staff and the experiences they made in the co-operation with paid staff. In each of the countries organisations who work with volunteers as well as training institutions are involved.
Goal
Development of a Continuous professional training
Programme "Encouragement and Facilitation of Voluntary Work".
Methodology
A research institute in each country takes care of the
national co-ordination, the writing of the curriculum and the
trans-national co-operation. ISIS in Francfort/Germany is responsible
for the overall co-ordination.
The partners in the three countries will compile contents of and
experiences with the existing continuous training programs and
evaluate their usefulness for the project. Through group discussions
and interviews with paid staff members and volunteers the contents of
the curriculum will be developed close to the demands of the
every-day work of practitioners. A working group of experts in each
country will accompany the project and comment on the draft versions
of the curriculum.
As a result of the project a curriculum will be available that
consists of a set of modules. These modules can be used in various
combinations as a flexible respond to the specific needs for
continuous training in different areas of work in the field of
promotion and support of voluntary work. The curriculum will be
completed by modules dealing with the specific framework conditions
of volunteering in the three countries. The curriculum will be
published in French and German. A pilot phase to test the curriculum
in different training institutions is planned after the publication.
Planning
March-June 2000 : Contacts and
meetings with French organisations
July 2000 : Meeting in Francfort/Main on the overall structure of the
curriculum
August-October 2000 : Designing of the curriculum and first draft for
general modules (3)
November 2000 : Meeting in Paris on the specific modules to
develop
December- April 2000: Developping of the specific modules (8)
April 2001 : Meeting in Austria on the overall curriculum
May 2001 : Conference in Strobl to present the curriculum to the
national partners
Partners
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Germany
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Austria
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France
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