In partnership with the Catholic Youth Foundation (Hungary), and the Hungarian Cultural Centre of the Serbian Folk Circle (Serbia) the Integratio Foundation implemented the project called Volunteering Reloaded! – Increasing the willingness of youth to volunteer, raising the general social appreciation of volunteering and, in turn, promoting volunteering at local/regional level, a small-scale Erasmus+ strategic partnership
The project ran between April 2022 and March 2023 and had the main objective of training, motivating and empowering young volunteers to take on social responsibility. The target group of the project were young people aged 15 to 25 years old from Novi Sad (Serbia), Szeged (Hungary) and Timisoara (Romania), for whom a three-day training was organised in Domaszék, Hungary in July 2022.
During the one-year project, the young people were able to put the knowledge they had acquired during the training into practice at two cultural festivals, the Interetno Festival in Subotica (August 2022) and the Hungarian Days in Timisoara (Szeptember 2022) where they took part in the implementation of cultural programmes (folk crafts, leading traditional games, handicrafts) in August 2022.
The project experience was summarised in two publications. The first one is the Volunteer Training curriculum, which contains training material on how to train, motivate and develop volunteers. This publication could be useful for all youth organisations working with volunteers. The second publication is the Recruiting methodology publication, which presents the history, role, functions and age specificities of volunteering. The focus of the publication is to present recruitment methods and practical ways to educate young volunteers in social responsibility.
The final event of the project was held in March 2023 at the Hungarian Cultural Centre of the People’s Circle in Subotica, where, in addition to the presentation of professional materials, a workshop was held for local secondary school students by the staff of the organisations involved in the project.
Project financed by European Union Erasmus+ program (Project No. 2021-2-HU01-KA210-YOU-000051350)