Volunteering has a positive impact on economic development, social inclusion, and volunteers as individuals. It contributes to the social connections, and explores its role in helping to foster civic engagement as well as delivering public goods. Through volunteering community can become more cohesive, safer, and stronger. On a personal level volunteering can improve the life and career paths of individual volunteers, as it has the power of increasing their self-esteem, enhancing various skills and capacities, and becoming healthier physically and mentally. Through volunteering social isolation can be reduces, as volunteers become more involved with and in the community. But even if the positive impact of volunteering in the field of social inclusion and its empowering effects on individuals are clear, all across Europe disadvantaged target groups, especially disabled people, are less likely to volunteer. The reasons are manifold: people with disabilities don’t volunteer due to barriers of access and lack of opportunities, as well as a lot of disadvantaged see volunteering as a less than desirable alternative to paid work. Some also associate volunteering with stigma, as they already have less opportunities of obtaining paid employment. So the opportunities and the value volunteering are not used to its full potential by and for people with disabilities. But with the right understanding, awareness and support from volunteer managers and organisations, those with additional needs can bring a broad and often unique range of skills and experience as committed volunteers. Driven by the strong belief, that everyone, regardless of age, culture, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, social status or disability, is able to volunteer and should have the opportunity to do so, 4 non-profit organisations from 4 different countries representing expertise in volunteer work or working with people with disabilties formed this partnership "Improve". Together they want to identify and develop methods and ways to promote “Inclusive volunteering”. Their joint vision is, that disabled persons, especially with mental or learning disabilities, will participate actively in volunteering and not just being "objects" of volunteering. Volunteering can help people living with a disability to recognise and improve their existing skills, and develop new ones. This is important for disabled people who are often made to feel as though they can only be the recipients of care rather than active contributors. Volunteering can turn this perception around and focuses on people’s strengths and abilities. Therefor Volunteering is also a powerful social tool of inclusion: it introduces disabled people to new networks, experiences, and learning opportunities. They also gained key employment skills such as time management, communications and working in a team, or learn new “professional” skills like service, retail, gardening etc. – depending on the volunteer work they are involved in. Additionally volunteers with a disability find that volunteering is a way of ‘repaying’ and reciprocating the help they have received. In this way inclusive volunteering also raises the profile of disability in a positive way in everyday life. This positive impact of volunteering is the joint vision and practical experience of the involved partners, but it is not the reality for most disabled people yet. So the partners involved want to share their experiences and expertise in order to identify ways, methods and strategies to improve the participation of people with disabilities in volunteering, and to create an inclusive environment for volunteering. The result of this transnational IMProVE project will be an E-Book including an input on inclusive volunteering, the learning results between project partners, on how to engage people with disabilities in the community, the barriers and succes factors of inclusive volunteering, the benefits of inclusive volunteering, the impact it has on local communities and individuals, recommendations on how to implement inclusive volunteering, and of course many concrete examples of good practice. This E-Book will be disseminated on local, regional, national and international level in order to inspire many volunteer organisations and organisations working with people with disabilities, but also individuals to use volunteering as a powerful pathway into social inclusion.
Volunteering has a positive impact on economic development, social inclusion and volunteers as individuals. It contributes to social ties and explores its role in promoting civic engagement and the provision of public goods. Through a volunteer community, it can become more cohesive, safer and stronger. On a personal level, volunteering can improve the life and career progression of individual volunteers, as it has the power to increase their self-esteem, strengthen various skills and abilities and become healthier physically and mentally. Volunteering can reduce social isolation because volunteers are more involved in and within the community. But while the positive impact of volunteering on social inclusion and its empowering effects on individuals is clear, across Europe, disadvantaged groups, especially people with intellectual disabilities (PWID), are less likely to participate voluntarily. The reasons are varied: people with disabilities do not volunteer voluntarily due to barriers to access and lack of opportunities, just as many disadvantaged people consider volunteering to be a less than desirable alternative to paid work. Some also associate volunteering with stigma because they already have fewer opportunities to get paid employment. Thus, the opportunities and value of volunteering are not fully exploited by and for people with disabilities. But with the right understanding, awareness, and support from volunteer managers and organizations, those with additional needs can bring a wide and often unique range of skills and experience as volunteer volunteers. Guided by the firm belief that everyone, regardless of age, culture, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, social status or disability, is capable of volunteering and should have the opportunity to do so, 4 non-profit organizations from 4 different countries representing Expertise in volunteering or working with people with disabilities has created this "Improve" partnership. Together, they wanted to identify and develop methods and ways to promote "inclusive volunteering." Their common vision was that disabled people, especially those with mental disabilities or learning disabilities (PWID), will be actively involved in volunteering after the completion of the IMProVE project, not only in being "objects" of volunteering. Volunteering has helped people with disabilities to identify and improve their existing skills and develop new ones. This is important for people with disabilities, who often feel that they can only be recipients of care, not active contributors. Volunteering reverses this perception and focuses on people's strengths and abilities. That is why volunteering is also a powerful social tool for inclusion: it introduces people with disabilities to new networks, experiences and learning opportunities. They also acquired key employment skills such as time management, communication and teamwork, or learned new "professional" skills such as service, retail, gardening, etc. - depending on the volunteer work they do. In addition, volunteers with disabilities will find that volunteering is a way to "repay" and retaliate for the help they receive. In this way, inclusive volunteering also positively raises the profile of disability in everyday life. This positive impact of volunteering has been and is a shared vision and practical experience of the partners involved, but for most people with disabilities it is not yet a reality. Stakeholders therefore want to share their experience and expertise in order to identify ways, methods and strategies to improve the participation of people with disabilities in volunteering and to create an inclusive environment for volunteering. The result of this transnational IMProVE project is a PHOTOBOOK including inputs on inclusive volunteering, learning outcomes among project partners, how to involve people with disabilities in the community, barriers and success factors of inclusive volunteering, benefits of inclusive volunteering, impact on local communities and individuals, recommendations on how to implement inclusive volunteering, and of course many concrete examples of good practice. This PHOTOBOOK has been disseminated at local, regional, national and international levels to inspire many volunteer organizations and organizations working with people with disabilities, but also individuals, to use volunteering as a strong path to social inclusion. FOTOBOOK is created entirely in EASY LANGUAGE, ie from beginning to end it uses language, font size and colors so that it is understandable to people with disabilities (PWID).