Future Skills for Volunteering Erasmus Project

Project Title

Future Skills for Volunteering

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Recognition (non-formal and informal learning/credits); New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Social dialogue

Project Summary

The Future Skills for Volunteering (FutVol) project set out to address future skills challenges in the field of volunteering in Europe. It responded to two European policy challenges for which European voluntary and other third sector organisations are not fully prepared: 1. The European Commission’s recommendation on the validation of non-formal and informal learning (2012/C 398/01), which acknowledges the role of civil society actors in facilitating processes for the validation of non-formal and informal learning; and 2. The EYV Alliance’s policy recommendations following the European year of Volunteering in 2011: creating an enabling environment, enhancing quality, recognition of volunteering, and acknowledging its value. It also addressed the widely acknowledged issue of growing professionalisation in the field.

Bringing together educational institutions, third-sector organisations and other actors from 10 countries (BG, FI, HU, IT, LV, PO, PT, RO, TK and UK), the FutVol project designed and testing a new skills concept aimed for volunteers as adult learners. The concept combined a set of defined future volunteering skills, peer learning and foresight activities.

The entire concept, named Your Future, your Volunteers comprised the following activities and products:
– a future skills in volunteering skills concept that is aligned with the European Key Competences for Lifelong Learning with validation processes and tools. Partners researched and identified 14 future skills in volunteering considered relevant all over Europe. They were included in the model with criteria, a STAR grid system for assessment and templates for open badges and skills certificates
– a design thinking -based peer learning model to help volunteers realise their strengths and discuss the acquisition of future skills
– a foresight tool for volunteers and civil society organisations to collect and analyse their stakeholders’ ideas of possible futures and other weak signals and to plan for action
– a publication combining our results, grassroots observations by volunteers and expert insight on change in volunteering and related skills needs
– testing the model with a total of over 100 volunteers in 10 countries, and at the end testing the open badges with them

The FutVol project achieved the following results:

– Adult learners (volunteers) have become aware of their future skills and more capable of acquiring skills that they can use in many contexts such as work or formal education and to some extent learn about how their volunteering relates to European citizenship;
– Partners and stakeholders have a clearer understanding of future skills needs in volunteering and documentation tools for their validation. They have also an increased capacity for foresight. This helps them in volunteer supervision and strategic planning.
– Volunteer managers, volunteers and other third-sector actors have access to all the tools, which can help volunteers and their organisations gain future skills and manage change in their environment. The model gives voluntary and other third sector organisations easy-to-use tools to be used for training, and the activities tested yielded new information about the future of volunteering on a grassroots level.
– Various other stakeholders such as decision makers can used the concept to build on their awareness on issues affecting the voluntary sector, which will help them in developing infrastructure for volunteering in general.

The FutVol project also aimed to raise discussion about the future of volunteering in Europe by engaging various stakeholders in its activities, such as testing, dissemination, webinars and multiplier events. It has managed to e.g. participate in wider discussions about future skills needs in society.

For the long term, the FutVol project works towards increasing the ability of voluntary and other third sector organisations to build their volunteers’ capacities for understanding their learning needs to meet future challenges, and to provide a skills concept that is useful for learners and easy to adapt to many contexts. For this, it has a sustainability plan, which partners have begun to implement.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 204560 Eur

Project Coordinator

Opintotoiminnan Keskusliitto ry & Country: FI

Project Partners

• Asociatia Centrul European pentru Integrare Socioprofesionala ACTA
• Cooperazione Paesi Emergenti
• Eco Communities
• Akademia Humanistyczno-Ekonomiczna w Lodzi
• ASPEKT-MANAGEMENT I MEZHDUKULTURNI OTNOSHENIYA
• Foundation for Society
• Tudás Alapítvány