Volunteering Management Expedition Erasmus Project

Project Title

Volunteering Management Expedition

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development); Civic engagement / responsible citizenship

Project Summary

All around Europe, both at a national level and in European projects, education and volunteering professionals design every year an array of highly useful tools and methods for volunteer management. However, many of them are underused despite heavy dissemination efforts. At the same time, European volunteer managers and coordinators lack opportunities for professional development, as the Erasmus+ project FUTUR3 has discovered (http://www.futur3skills.eu/futur3skills/images/pdf/FUTUR3_THE_BENCHMARKING_REPORT_part1.pdf).

The Volunteering Management Expedition (VolExpo) project aims to improve the methodological competences of volunteer managers and coordinators (both paid and unpaid) by collecting and methods and tools that correspond to their skills needs from at least 9 European countries, sharing them at virtual ‘expeditions’. i.e. eLearning projects with webinars, web clinics and online discussions, testing them for impact in partners’ countries with volunteers and selecting the most useful ones for translation and localisation. On its completion, it will publish an interactive toolbox for volunteer managers to gain new tools for their work.

The objectives of the VolExpo project are:
1. To increase the managerial and supervision competences of European volunteer managers and coordinators on issues on which they have expressed future skills needs (4 skills groups: 1. managerial – project skills, time management etc.; 2. supervision – leadership coordinating people, conflict resolution etc.), 3. communication (including social media and ITs for volunteer management); 4. cooperation (with volunteers, colleagues, other organisations, media etc.)
2. To improve the volunteering experience and increase opportunities for learning among volunteers across Europe through their managers’ increased competences
3. To make better use of existing tools and methods for volunteer management by selecting suitable ones for presentations and virtual workshops and translating and localissing the ones most suitable for use in partners’ countries

In addition, the project aims to strengthen networks between European volunteer managers locally through its testing activities and internationally through its virtual mobility activities or ‘expeditions’ as they are called in this project (webinars, web clinics).

The project aims to achieve the following impacts:

– Individual volunteer managers will gain knowledge about various European tools and methods for volunteer management and a growing competence in using them. Their competences will also grow through networking both locally and internationally.

– Volunteers will experience an improved volunteering experience, leading to An increased capacity to act in their volunteering tasks and new learning opportunities

– Participating organisations should observe an increased capacity to supervise and manage their volunteers, an increased understanding of current methods in the field and an increased capacity to train their stakeholders

– Other stakeholders (voluntary sector organisations ad their umbrella organisations around Europe) will have access to new knowledge about methods and tools available for volunteer management and their transferability, and increase their capacity for management and training in the field.

Project Website

http://www.volexpo.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 174884,7 Eur

Project Coordinator

Opintotoiminnan Keskusliitto ry & Country: FI

Project Partners

• Foundation for Society
• Cooperazione Paesi Emergenti
• KERIGMA – INSTITUTO DE INOVACAO E DESENVOLVIMENTO SOCIAL DE BARCELOS
• Tudás Alapítvány
• Asociatia Centrul European pentru Integrare Socioprofesionala ACTA
• BUYUK ORTADOGU SAGLIK VE EGITIM VAKFI
• ASPEKT-MANAGEMENT I MEZHDUKULTURNI OTNOSHENIYA