Volunteer Boost

On 6/10/2017 33 people from 9 countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Sweden) met in a castle in Bartošovice, Czech Republic. They came to participate in a training course “ Volunteer boost ” organised by a NGO “ Brno for you s.z. ” and co-funded by European Union under the frame of Erasmus+ programme. For 8 days participants dealt with topics related to volunteering and volunteer management, e.g. recruitment and selection of volunteers, conflict management, active listening and volunteer recognition.  Main idea of the project was to build capacity for youth organisations in Europe working with, or involving volunteers in their daily work and activities by providing professional volunteer management competencies to their youth workers and trying to involve as many and as various organizations as possible. The project was facilitated by certified youth worker and experienced trainer Cosmin Catana and Project & Comm...

Unfortunaltely  this is the last day of the project, the last day in Bartošovice. We started the day with a small group session about European  voluntary service,training courses and youth exchanged  .Each participant had the opportunity to write down on a sheet of paper ideas about a future project that he/she would like to coordinate and participate.Then we continued the day with one last sessions about Follow up and dissemination .. We tried various methods of spreading the result of the projects – we spilt in groups about video recording, brochure and press release translated in several languages. After this we all completed the evaluation of the project and we have the chance to speak into circle  what we like to bring home   and to make some suggestions to the future projects. We ended the day with youthpass certificates awarding. It's a pitty that the time was so short and it was a really pleasure to meet and colaborate with all of you and we w...

Day 6 started with an administrative announcement about lunch. Afterwards we went outside to take a group photo in a sunny place. Everyone will have really small eyes J we did an energizer with Sona who made us move a lot, we really woke up a little bit. We were energized enough for the next task: we split in order to prioritize the reasons why people are volunteering. After gathering back in the big room and talking about it, we had the MCCLELLAND’S test for finding out what our motivation is. Marty energized us with the house song and I think everyone woke up after those really loud screams. After this, Sorin got the floor talking about the recognition of the volunteers and grouping us to find out our ideas of recognition. Sorin’s beautiful assistant Cosmin is now having the floor showing us videos with EVS volunteers. The other beautiful assistant, Sorin, is now back on the stage explaining us how the monitoring is working. And now Romania is having the floor because of this coo...

The day started with review of previous day. The previous day was field activity which includes study visit of Ostrava. People were divided in group of 4/5 and asked to explore city. Couple of groups was given a task to explore and visit local NGOs and municipal services. The trainer Cosmin asked about local nonprofit Organization NGO named ADRA, Alessandro and Beston explained the objectives and activity of ADRA From this review the next activity was pretty much related. A successful local NGO named S.T.O.P  was invited as Guest to share the idea and experience of their organization Mgr. Ivona represented her Organization S.T.O.P. and talked about basic ideas of freedom/tolerance/equality/opportunity which makes the basis of their organization. She explained the projects which includes lectures/Education for children of socially unstable/poor conditioned families. The volunteers visit their homes and with consent of parents and STOP officials, start helping in subjec...

The group departed for Ostrava for a study visit and a bit of city exploration.  We were separated in 5 teams and we were assigned to interview random local people from different ages groups, asking them 3 questions regarding volunteering to find out if they were familiar with the term or if they had volunteered by any chance. Each group had an extra different task like visiting a hospital, a local NGO etc. and ask if they need volunteers to cover their activities. Every unique group had different experiences and their own challenges. We also had free time to enjoy a decent cup of coffee. The bad weather didn’t distract our great mood and we continued enjoying our trip. Getting back to the venue, the majority was exhausted while other took the advantage of the free evening to play board games. Author of the article: Filipe (Portugal)

We started our third  day with a game of energizers activities, to be well awake :). The game consisted of our ability to act quickly and accurately. We went on to the subject of  recruiting and selecting  where we learned the basic way of interviewing someone and what is important to keep in mind when interviewing a volunteer. After this first period  we had  our pause for coffee . After  the break  we were divided into groups and each one was given a task, in which we would somehow have to put up an advertisement for the hiring of a volunteer (newspaper, radio, Facebook etc). Before lunch each group presented their work. At one we had our lunch break . In the afternoon, and after our announcements we prepared ourselves to interview our candidates with real interviews. After all groups were done Cosmin gave us his feedback, with tips to improve the way we interview  our volunteers. Before the afterno...

During the second day of the training course we started with the topic “Job Description”. We addressed the importance of making a good and informative job description when looking for volunteers. That way we minimize the chance of misunderstanding what we are looking for in a volunteer. We followed this with an active role play on how to conduct interviews.  We got divided into groups and were set up with the task to conduct an interview. The groups simulated different situations, mostly complicated characters, as they then tried to tackle. Note to self: when interviewing volunteers, remember that they are out of their comfort zone. Questions should be open and DO NOT FORGET to make the person feel appreciated and welcomed. Then we moved on to how to properly welcome volunteers into the receiving organization. The important lesson here was the induction/orientation of the volunteers. It’s also important to have a procedure regarding the expectations of the volunteer. Tha...

Brief volunteering overview in  Ostrava, Czech Republic  Participants of the training course made the research focusing on the finding the situation about volunteering. In the text you can see the results from the small research. Date of the research : October 10th 2017 Methodology:  • Questionnaires • 44 Random respondents • Age categories • Closed-ended questions Volunteers vs. Non volunteers Already volunteereed Volunteered in: Did not volunteer but would like to Did not volunteer yet but would like to to volunteer in

The first day of the project was targeted mainly on getting to know each other and preparing our group for getting deeper into the topic in the upcoming days. Finally, we were complete on our venue and ready to start to work hard. We started outside with an energizer facilitated by Sorin. We were jumping in the circle front and back according to the fruits, that Sorin was saying. Then we continued in the conference room with an introduction of the trainers and of the organizational team, as well as the brief introduction of the background of our project. We went through the timing during the project and we learn more about the agenda for the next two days. Our other task was to think about our fears, contributions, and expectations. We summarized them on colorful post-its and we sticked them to the flipchart. At the end of the project, we’ll come back to this flipchart to see if our expectations were reached, fears broken etc. Just before the coffee break, we created our p...

The training course Volunteer Boost is based on need of the NGOs from 9 European countries to get the necessary knowledge and skills for professional volunteer management. The project has two phases, first phase was organized between 6.10. – 14.10.2017 in Bartošovice, Czech Republic. The second phase will be dedicated for the evaluation of the progress of youth workers and volunteer coordinators. This project will provide the necessary tools and instruments to support volunteer management processes in 9 youth organisations (recruitment, assessment, monitoring, evaluation, motivation and recognition and certification of competencies developed through volunteering activities). The project is organized by the NGO Brno for you. The training course is led by the two highly experienced and professional trainers from Romania, Cosmin Catana and Sorin Berbecar.  Participating organizations: ·          Brno for you (Czech Republic) · ...