With the project "Active citizenship pays off: European cooperation on a recognition system for volunteering and active young people" the project partners aha - Tipps und Infos für Junge Leute/Austria, Young Scot/Scotland and Amt der Vorarlberger Landesregierung - Office for Future-Related Issues/Austria would like to promote active participation and volunteering among young people. The project provides 600000 young people in Scotland and 80000 in Vorarlberg with the opportunities to volunteer or to recognize and reward their volunteering. By implementing this project the partners respond to an identified need for recognition of voluntary work and of the competences acquired while volunteering. The project partners' expertise about recognition systems for voluntary work of young people will be shared and a system will be developed which allows young people to earn points for active participation in various activities/organisations and to receive recognition such as meaningful products and special experience opportunities. Additionally the project partners, together with different stakeholders, will develop a "Social CV" which lists type and scope of the young people's voluntary activities and documents the acquired skills and competences. This Social CV increases the young people's employability and helps companies to hire committed young people. In the course of the project two tools will be developed (Rewards System Manual, Open Source Software) that facilitate the transfer of the recognition system and the Social CV to other European organisations and regions. The target groups will be involved in the project from the start, Art of Hosting methods will be used for most of the processes.The project partners are active in the fields of youth information / Youth card and civic engagement / volunteering. They set up the project on the following target groups and expect the following impact:- Young people between 13 and 30 engage increasingly in society and thereby expand their personal and social competences and have better opportunities for their future education and career.- Organisations and institutions where young people can get involved voluntarily more easily find committed young people.- Companies can use the Social CV as a tool that documents skills and competences acquired in voluntary activities in informal and non-formal contexts.- Society / stakeholders from the fields of volunteering, business, youth work, administration etc. perceive young people as active citizens.
With the project „Active citizenship pays off: European cooperation on a recognition system for volunteering and active young people” the project partners aha – Jugendinforma¬tions¬zentrum Vorarlberg/Austria, Young Scot/Scotland and Amt der Vorarlberger Landesregierung – Büro für Zukunftsfragen/Austria aimed at promoting and recognizing volunteering activities among young people. During the project period (1/1/2016 – 30/6/2018) the partners shared experience and expertise on voluntary engagement and developed “aha plus”, a recognition scheme for Vorarlberg: With “aha plus”, young people between 12 and 24 in Vorarlberg have the opportunity to get active in voluntary activities (“Quests”) offered by associations or other organisations, collect “Points” for the activities and exchange them for meaningful products or special experience (“Rewards”). As part of the project the basic structure of a “Social CV” was developed which lists the experience collected doing the activities and which should subsequently be of help to young people with job applications. Two results of the projects are the aha plus website www.ahaplus.at and a manual which documents the process of development and the functionalities of the two recognition schemes in Vorarlberg and Scotland. The project results were disseminated locally in numerous workshops with young people and associations, nationally with organisation in the youth information field and on a European level at a conference with youth card organisations.