DO MORE of what matters -training program for volunteers. Erasmus Project

Project Title

DO MORE of what matters -training program for volunteers.

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 youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Cooperation between educational institutions and business; Social entrepreneurship / social innovation

Project Summary

Social entrepreneurs are visionaries who try to bring positive change in the society by practically applying their social entrepreneurship ideas and strategies to resolve social problems in the society. However, based on research there are many challenges which Poland faces with development of more social entrepreneurship initiatives. Those challenges include among others: lack of skills and good leaders, lack of knowledge about acquiring funding and organisational aspects (including EU funding, sponsorship from companies), lack of knowledge about social capital, lack of networking skills. To be able to bring positive change to this challenge My Future would like to create “DO MORE of what matters -training program for volunteers”.

The main objective of the program is: to increase the amount of social entrepreneurs, volunteers and the level of positive influence of initiatives implemented by them.

The sub objectives of the project are:
a) increase of the quality of teaching methods of the soft skills among youth
b) increase knowledge among youth about volunteering opportunities
c) increase in number of volunteers
d) increase the cooperation between schools and NGO
e) increase the quality of volunteer training by innovative “learning by doing” approach

There are so many people who would like to volunteer, but do not have the necessary skills for it. This statement is confirmed by experience of the partners- My Future have conducted survey in the previous project where 75% of them have said “Yes, I would like to become volunteer.” and 20% said “Maybe Yes”. Trough the further qualitative interviews it has been also understood that youth would like to take part in necessary recruitment process and training to become volunteers and social entrepreneurs. The interviewed youth (Radom district) have very low level about knowledge of what is social capital and social entrepreneurship, what are the skills of volunteer, how to be project manager of social initiative- however they are very eager to allocate their free time to bring positive change in the society. They luck skills in organising social initiatives and opportunities to test the skills. Those statistics and evidence made the partners realised that “DO MORE of what matters -training program for volunteers” is needed to be able to develop the more social entrepreneurship spirit among young people.

The target group of the training will be youth which has been using My Future services – those are girls and boys from Radom district in age 15-19, which expressed their interest in social entrepreneurship and proved the basic social entrepreneur characteristic such as: creativity, ability to spot opportunities, tolerance, willingness to work had, ability to risk, taking responsibility for own decisions, being driven by positive change.

Training would include the theoretical part, which would explain youth basic principals of Social Capital, Networking, Bridging and Bonding, Soft skills importance etc. After the theoretical part all the acquired knowledge would be conveyed trough practical teaching – so the youth would co-organise the social initiative “Entrepreneurial workshops” for their younger peers. This approach of training will also allow to sustain the project. Youth which took part in training will organise social initiative and will recruit more people to become social entrepreneurs- this youth to youth model is very well known in Denmark and Poland can benefit from it.

Project Website

https://www.my-future.info/wolontariat/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 77183 Eur

Project Coordinator

My Future & Country: PL

Project Partners

• INSTITUTE FOR APPLIED KNOWLEDGE ApS