All around Europe, both at a national level and in European projects, education and volunteering professionals design every year an array of highly useful tools and methods for volunteer management. However, many of them are underused despite heavy dissemination efforts. At the same time, European volunteer managers and coordinators lack opportunities for professional development, as the Erasmus+ project FUTUR3 has discovered (http://www.futur3skills.eu/futur3skills/images/pdf/FUTUR3_THE_BENCHMARKING_REPORT_part1.pdf). The Volunteering Management Expedition (VolExpo) project aims to improve the methodological competences of volunteer managers and coordinators (both paid and unpaid) by collecting and methods and tools that correspond to their skills needs from at least 9 European countries, sharing them at virtual 'expeditions'. i.e. eLearning projects with webinars, web clinics and online discussions, testing them for impact in partners' countries with volunteers and selecting the most useful ones for translation and localisation. On its completion, it will publish an interactive toolbox for volunteer managers to gain new tools for their work. The objectives of the VolExpo project are: 1. To increase the managerial and supervision competences of European volunteer managers and coordinators on issues on which they have expressed future skills needs (4 skills groups: 1. managerial - project skills, time management etc.; 2. supervision - leadership coordinating people, conflict resolution etc.), 3. communication (including social media and ITs for volunteer management); 4. cooperation (with volunteers, colleagues, other organisations, media etc.) 2. To improve the volunteering experience and increase opportunities for learning among volunteers across Europe through their managers' increased competences 3. To make better use of existing tools and methods for volunteer management by selecting suitable ones for presentations and virtual workshops and translating and localissing the ones most suitable for use in partners' countries In addition, the project aims to strengthen networks between European volunteer managers locally through its testing activities and internationally through its virtual mobility activities or 'expeditions' as they are called in this project (webinars, web clinics). The project aims to achieve the following impacts: - Individual volunteer managers will gain knowledge about various European tools and methods for volunteer management and a growing competence in using them. Their competences will also grow through networking both locally and internationally. - Volunteers will experience an improved volunteering experience, leading to An increased capacity to act in their volunteering tasks and new learning opportunities - Participating organisations should observe an increased capacity to supervise and manage their volunteers, an increased understanding of current methods in the field and an increased capacity to train their stakeholders - Other stakeholders (voluntary sector organisations ad their umbrella organisations around Europe) will have access to new knowledge about methods and tools available for volunteer management and their transferability, and increase their capacity for management and training in the field.
The objectives of the project were: 1) To increase the managerial, supervision, communication and cooperation competences of volunteer managers and coordinators on issues on which they have expressed future skills needs. 2) To improve the volunteering experience and increase opportunities for learning among volunteers through their managers' increased competences. 3) To make better use of existing tools and methods by selecting suitable ones for presentations and virtual workshops, and translating and localizing the useful ones in partners' countries. Project worked towards to improve the competences of volunteer managers (both paid and unpaid) by collecting methods and tools that correspond to their skills needs. Tools were shared at virtual expeditions (international online courses) with webinars, web clinics and online discussions. The project also aimed to strengthen networks between European volunteer managers locally through its testing activities and internationally through its virtual mobility activities or 'expeditions' as they were called in this project. On its completion, the project published a toolbox for volunteer managers to gain tools for their work.
All around Europe, both at a national level and in European projects, education and volunteering professionals design every year an array of useful tools and methods for volunteer management. However, many of them are underused despite heavy dissemination efforts. At the same time, volunteer managers and coordinators lack opportunities for professional development. The project consortium identified a need to collect, share and localize existing tools instead of inventing new ones. Volunteering and volunteer management are as activities very similar across Europe, and the problems the voluntary sector addresses transcend borders. This is why tool and knowledge sharing and mutual learning among volunteer managers is fruitful. Countries with a shorter tradition of volunteering gain from the structured approach of more established volunteering systems, and they have plenty to learn from the innovative approaches of more recently evolved volunteering communities. The project was aimed to produce increased knowledge and use of existing tools for volunteer management, networking opportunities and improved volunteering experience for volunteers as adult learners.
All around Europe, both at a national level and in European projects, education and volunteering professionals design every year an array of highly useful tools and methods for volunteer management. However, many of them are underused despite heavy dissemination efforts. At the same time, European volunteer managers and coordinators lack opportunities for professional development, as the Erasmus+ project FUTUR3 has discovered (http://www.futur3skills.eu/futur3skills/images/pdf/FUTUR3_THE_BENCHMARKING_REPORT_part1.pdf). The Volunteering Management Expedition (VolExpo) project aims to improve the methodological competences of volunteer managers and coordinators (both paid and unpaid) by collecting and methods and tools that correspond to their skills needs from at least 9 European countries, sharing them at virtual 'expeditions'. i.e. eLearning projects with webinars, web clinics and online discussions, testing them for impact in partners' countries with volunteers and selecting the most useful ones for translation and localisation. On its completion, it will publish an interactive toolbox for volunteer managers to gain new tools for their work. The objectives of the VolExpo project are: 1. To increase the managerial and supervision competences of European volunteer managers and coordinators on issues on which they have expressed future skills needs (4 skills groups: 1. managerial - project skills, time management etc.; 2. supervision - leadership coordinating people, conflict resolution etc.), 3. communication (including social media and ITs for volunteer management); 4. cooperation (with volunteers, colleagues, other organisations, media etc.) 2. To improve the volunteering experience and increase opportunities for learning among volunteers across Europe through their managers' increased competences 3. To make better use of existing tools and methods for volunteer management by selecting suitable ones for presentations and virtual workshops and translating and localissing the ones most suitable for use in partners' countries In addition, the project aims to strengthen networks between European volunteer managers locally through its testing activities and internationally through its virtual mobility activities or 'expeditions' as they are called in this project (webinars, web clinics). The project aims to achieve the following impacts: - Individual volunteer managers will gain knowledge about various European tools and methods for volunteer management and a growing competence in using them. Their competences will also grow through networking both locally and internationally. - Volunteers will experience an improved volunteering experience, leading to An increased capacity to act in their volunteering tasks and new learning opportunities - Participating organisations should observe an increased capacity to supervise and manage their volunteers, an increased understanding of current methods in the field and an increased capacity to train their stakeholders - Other stakeholders (voluntary sector organisations ad their umbrella organisations around Europe) will have access to new knowledge about methods and tools available for volunteer management and their transferability, and increase their capacity for management and training in the field.