Volunteering for the future: A strategic partnership for innovative learning of European volunteers The project focuses on developing high quality learning opportunities that are tailored to individual adult learners, utilising innovative ways of outreach and delivery. This will include the development and roll-out of a series of courses and resources for returned international volunteers that will promote active citizenship and social inclusion, utilising a blended learning approach. Tailored resources and courses will additionally be developed to support volunteer sending agencies in their role as adult educators by strengthening their competencies to engage with a wide range of learners, using new technologies to support their work and help ensure better teaching outcomes and ensure quality standards in active citizenship and volunteering. Work with returned volunteers is a unique area of adult education. Adults who go overseas to volunteer come from a range of backgrounds and skills, and there is enormous potential to translate the skills and experiences they have as a result of volunteering internationally into lifelong learning and, in particular, transform such individuals to deepen their sense of identity as active global citizens. This project aims to develop curricula and methodologies to enable volunteers to recognise and further develop skills that were stimulated while overseas (e.g. critical thinking, multiple perspectives, community participation, strategies to address global injustice issues, etc.) and equip participants with support and competencies that will enable them to participate as active global citizens, not just in their short term role as international volunteers but throughout their lives. The project will enable blended learning approaches, utilising in particular digital strategies such as webinars, online courses and communication to ensure that learning opportunities are brought to as wide a group as possible, including those living in geographically marginalised areas. The project brings together partners from the Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland and the UK, all of whom are very experienced in working with volunteers within the sphere of adult education. It will directly involve just over 440 participants over its 3-year course, and a further estimated 10,000 people indirectly. It will produce a comprehensive suite of research, training and education materials, and online learning opportunities that will be widely promoted through the partners' extensive networks nationally, throughout the EU and internationally, and the resources will remain publicly available at the end of the project’s life cycle. They will additionally be incorporated into the pedagogical framework of relevant organisations through training of facilitators, thereby ensuring their mainstreaming and sustainability.
Over the course of 32 months, the project developed high quality learning opportunities for volunteers returning from placements in the Global South, to upskill them as active citizens on international development issues. Each partner – in Czech Republic (Inex), Germany (finep), Ireland (Comhlámh) and the UK (Volunteering Matters) - has extensive experience of working with international volunteers, and the project helped to deepen our competencies to translate volunteers’ skills and experiences gained while overseas into lifelong learning and active citizenship. We achieved this through the production of intellectual outputs (research, training resources, and an online course), training for returned volunteers and for volunteer sending agencies, and a series of multiplier events that raised awareness of the project. In addition to building partners’ capacity to support continuous engagement, the project specifically targeted individual volunteers and volunteer sending agencies. All of the resources and materials developed focused on recognising and deepening volunteers’ skills that were stimulated while overseas (e.g. critical thinking, multiple perspectives, community participation, etc.). The project commenced with research into enabling conditions that support volunteers to remain involved in international development following a placement: the findings were used to identify guidelines on fostering and promoting active citizenship, which provided the foundation for the subsequent intellectual outputs and training courses. We then developed a pan-EU training course for returned international volunteers. Our first training event provided an opportunity to pilot this course with 35 volunteers from the 4 partner countries, who were subsequently supported to develop an individual or group global justice action project, Each partner then worked to localise the training to their national contexts, which resulted in the production of four training manuals specifically tailored for working with returning volunteers in Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland and the UK. We each ran a multiplier event, which provided an opportunity to pilot the courses with 79 volunteers. Participants from these multiplier events were also supported and mentored to undertake action projects on global justice issues. The next stage involved the development of a training companion, which accompanies facilitators working with returned volunteers, to deepen their reflexive practice and encourage/support them to review and strengthen their work on active citizenship. This drew on the knowledge gained during the production of the research and training manuals and on partners’ collective expertise, and was underpinned throughout by development education methodologies. In the project’s final year, we held a training of trainers’ course for staff involved in international volunteer placement programmes, which provided an opportunity for the learning from the training manuals, the research and the training companion to be presented to 26 participants, whose organisations arrange approx. 3,684 volunteer placements annually. We additionally worked to adapt the course materials into an online format, which was piloted through facilitated webinars with 36 returned volunteers. The course was then launched as a stand-alone, self-guided resource, helping to ensure that learning opportunities are brought to as wide a group as possible, including those living in geographically marginalised areas; it has since been used by over a hundred learners. In the project’s penultimate month, each partner ran a multiplier event in their respective countries, which raised awareness of the materials with a wide group of stakeholders (99 participants in total), including individual volunteers, volunteer sending organisations, relevant state authorities, and other international networks. Throughout the project, we disseminated the outputs/key achievements to 809 volunteer sending organisations, third level institutions, national and international networks, returnee networks, and education platforms. The resources and approaches have since been adopted into the practice of volunteer sending agencies in each partner country, as well as referenced by international networks and initiatives. The action projects developed by course participants have directly reached an estimated 3,185 members of the public, indirectly engaging a further 10,400, on international development topics that range from migration to climate change to the SDGs. Each partner has incorporated the learning into their pedagogical frameworks, and continues to work on supporting active citizenship through online and offline courses for returned volunteers. Finally, the project’s training manuals will be adapted for a new E+ project (2019-2021) that will link returned volunteers and newly arrived migrants to work together on global justice action projects.