The partner organizations – Volunteer Centre Osijek from Croatia, Slovenian Philanthropy, Volunteer Centre and Self-help Denmark (FriSe), National Network for Civil Society from Germany, Volunteering Ireland and European Volunteer Centre (CEV) have created a strategic partnership and merged their knowledge and experiences in order to explore the best practices and find solutions and innovations that reduce social exclusion among young people through volunteering. In the past five years volunteering is fairly recognized, as a way of non-formal learning that supports the personal growth of young people and the development of their social empowerment and transversal competences, but still not adequately valued and used as an efficient tool for social inclusion of youth with fewer opportunities including refugees. Volunteer involving organizations and practitioners are seeking for effective approaches to involve youth with fewer opportunities, including young immigrants and refugees, and to find effective tools and simple tools to value and present the benefits of volunteering on social inclusion. Youth with fewer opportunities need inclusive volunteer programs that support their participation in the society and their personal and professional development. Considering all of that, the main purpose of the project is to create strategic international cooperation on: improving practices of work with youth by measuring, testing and developing innovative models of youth volunteering as effective tools of inclusion; building new competences of organisations and experts who work with disadvnateged youth; affirming volunteering as a way of empowerment and tool of social inclusion; reinforcing links between practice and policy by creating new platforms for exchange of experience and know-how between organizations/experts in the field of youth volunteering and social inclusion. Since volunteering ensures active participation of youth in democratic life, this project contributes to the EU values of freedom, tolerance and respect of diversities. The project will involve participants from Croatia, Slovenia, Germany, Ireland, Belgium and Denmark through following activities; The staff of partner organizations (10-12) participating in developing intellectual outputs and project results such as: Focus Reasearch and Report; Manual/Methodology on measuring the impact of volunteering on social inclusion and its application in 10 volunteer involving organizations in five involved countries; Educational curriculum "New patway to social inclusion"; Policy Paper and conference recommendations on the volunteering as a tool for social inclusion disseminated to different stakeholders at local, regional, national and EU level. Disadvanteged youth (30) will get opportunites to share their personal testemonies of impact on volunteering on their life and inclusion in the society and participate in the process of piloting the methodology for impact measurement through volunteer programs of organizations. Volunteer involving organizations (cca 40) will participate in Focus Research, multiplier event for piloting the new methodology on measuring the impact of volunteering on social inclusion and in piloting. The representatives of volunteer involving organizations, 60 members of European Volunteer Centre Network - CEV) will benefit from new knowledge and tools created in the project through multiplier event - capacity budiling conference. The policy makers at EU level (30) will be informed about new tools and initiatives of this project and asked for greater support of volunteering as a tool of social incluion of youth. The key methodology of the project is based on linking different stakeholders, networking and creation of long-term partnership that enables exchange of information, experience and best practices and mobilizes all resources in the most efficient way in order to develop innovation and/or improve practices of work with youth with fewer opportunities. This methodology creates ownership of the outputs and results and increases motivation to ensure visibility of the project achievements. The impact and sustainability of the project will be achieved through: improved infrastructure for development of volunteering as a tool for social inclusion; improved capacities of volunteer involving organizations and partner organizations for developing services and activities in line with the needs of youth with fewer opportunities; improved life quality of disadvanteged youth by their active engagement in the society through volunteering; support improvment the social inclusion and volunteering policy and its transfer into the practice.
The partner organisations DKolektiv from Croatia, Slovenian Philanthropy, Volunteer Centre and Self-help Denmark (FriSe), National Network for Civil Society from Germany, Volunteering Ireland and Centre for European Volunteering (CEV) have created a strategic partnership and merged their knowledge and experiences in order to explore the best practices and find solutions and innovations that reduce social exclusion among young people through volunteering. The main purpose of the project was to create strategic international cooperation on: improving practices of work with youth by measuring, testing and developing innovative models of youth volunteering as effective tools of inclusion; building new competences of organisations and experts who work with disadvnateged youth; affirming volunteering as a way of empowerment and tool of social inclusion; reinforcing links between practice and policy by creating new platforms for exchange of experience and know-how between organisations/experts in the field of youth volunteering and social inclusion. The success of social inclusion depends not only on the kind of volunteering activities on offer, but also on the kind of support and conditions that governments, volunteer development agencies and volunteer-involving organisations can provide. Therefore, the project also assists institutions and decision-makers to formulate policies and support programmes through comparable systematic data on the circumstances in which volunteering is useful for personal development, empowerment and inclusion of young people. During the “Making it Matter” project significant evidence was gathered in favour of inclusive programmes that support disadvantaged and marginalised youth to participate actively in volunteering in whatever way they can. Project enabled the creation of methods and indicators for impact measurement that will help volunteer involving organisations to understand the key benefits, and shape the most inclusive volunteer programmes. The partnership resulted with the following results and outputs that, in the long term, contributed to the improvement of social and organisational capacities for the development of high quality, innovative and community-oriented services that support the empowerment and inclusion of young people at risk of social exclusion through volunteering. IO1 Focus Research Report gives an overview of existing EU and national policies and practices that support the inclusion of disadvantaged youth through volunteering. The key findings and recommendations of the Report came out as a result of desk research of existing policies on an EU and national level, research implemented through 413 questionnaires of volunteer-involving organisations and interviews with 11 disadvantaged youth volunteers and 9 volunteer coordinators. The interviews were filmed and shaped in longer and shorter version of the promotional videos with testimonies of volunteer coordinators and volunteers on the impact of volunteering on their life and inclusion in the society. IO2 Manual on measuring the impact of volunteering on social inclusion designed as a simple, innovative tool, for regular monitoring and evaluation of impact of volunteering, evidence based, linking volunteer experience and its benefits with the impact on overall people’s well-being. The methodology was piloted within 11 organisations and 20 disadvantaged volunteers. IO3 Educational curriculum "New pathway to social inclusion" with tutor notes has been designed to ensure permanent support of capacity building of volunteer involving organisations to develop effective and well-managed inclusive volunteer programmes for disadvantaged youth. The design of the curriculum was followed by 3 implemented educations for over 50 participants. IO4 Policy Paper relies on the key findings of the Focus Research report and the Manual and offers set of recommendations at local, regional, national and EU level. It was communicated and disseminated to different stakeholders. 3 multiplier events through which the project results and outputs were presented and discussed as relevant for contributing to social inclusion gathered 129 participants from over 20 EU countries, among which were relevant researchers, practitioners, representatives of NGOs and representatives of European institutions who gained new knowledge and tools and were asked for greater support of volunteering as a tool of social inclusion of youth. The impact and sustainability of the project were achieved through improved infrastructure for development of volunteering as a tool for social inclusion; improved capacities of volunteer involving organisations and partner organisations for developing services and activities in line with the needs of disadvantaged youth; improved life quality of disadvantaged youth by their active engagement in the society through volunteering. The project contributed to the EU values of freedom, tolerance, respect of diversities.