The “Volunteering for Heritage – Best Practice Exchange” project aims at the improvement of qualifications of the adult education staff members who cooperate with volunteers on a daily basis as well as the exchange of best practices between the organisations operating in this field. All the project partners work for cultural heritage and have experience in involving volunteers in these activities. The Churches Conservation Trust in England is in charge of 356 historic churches that had lost their sacral function. Conserving such a number of sites and making them available is possible thanks to ca. 2000 volunteers dispersed all over England and working in their local communities. The Satakunta Museum in Pori, Finland, is a regional museum that involves volunteers in its activities. What is more, its responsibilities include supporting small museums run by volunteers in the whole province. Such museums are grassroots initiatives of local communities cultivating their local heritage, and the official museum supports them with its professional staff and infrastructure. Culture Hub Croatia is an NGO forming partnerships with various local organisations and governments in order to support them in the management of heritage resources – especially the ones at risk of deterioration. Within these activities, it cooperates with professionals from all over Europe, who use their skills and training to support local governments in heritage preservation works within the volunteering project. The Chronić Dobro (‘Protect Goodness’) Foundation in Krakow, Poland, takes care of the oldest existing monastery in Poland by involving both local and international volunteers in building awareness of the role of heritage and the need to protect it. Within its activities, the Foundation strives to create a community of volunteers around a specific heritage site. Thus, all the partners have a strong common foundation and, at the same time, each engages in unique aspects of cooperation with volunteers that they can share with the other partners. We also share the conviction that volunteering for heritage doesn’t only translate into tangible benefits in protecting the heritage, but, above all, it is a great way to strengthen local communities and support the advancement of a civil society that feels responsible for their heritage resources, for their localities and their surroundings; a society that develops its sense of empowerment and impact on their environment. The project will involve adult education staff members working with volunteers in organisations. Each partner will organise a study visit and invite 3 representatives of the remaining participating organisations each – a coordinator and two persons involved in cooperation with volunteers. The study visits will serve the purpose of exchanging best practices and mutual inspiration, as well as strengthening the staff by developing their competences and reinforcing their motivation. In all, there will be one international meeting of the coordinators and four short training visits with each of the project partners in turn. Moreover, three trainings for participants will be organised (12 persons per training), devised to specifically address work with volunteers in the field of heritage. These will accompany some of the study visits. The main result of the project will be the improvement of the competences of the staff of the organisations, which will translate into their daily work with volunteers as well as new inspirations allowing to broaden the scope of the activities conducted so far. The trained staff will share the new knowledge and skills with volunteers – so, ultimately, they are beneficiaries of the project as well. A stronger staff means stronger organisations able to improve the quality of their activities and broaden their scope. We are hoping that in the long term, this will translate into a broader recognition of the organisations and an increase in the numbers of volunteers willing to become involved for heritage.
The overarching goal of the project was the development of volunteering for heritage and strengthening social awareness concerning this issue. We want to pursue this objective (strengthening social awareness is always a long-term process) by educating the organisations’ staff who work with volunteers as well as through discovering interesting models of operation that can translate into new solutions in our organisations, increasing their attractiveness to potential new volunteers. Thus, the first objective was to increase the organisations’ staff competences through trainings and exchange of good practices. The next step was to share the new experiences with the staff and volunteers of the organisations. An additional goal was to inspire the volunteers and show them the significance of their work. Thus, the volunteers who had been active in their organisations for a long time were also involved in the project. Ultimately, we want to create the best possible conditions for getting involved, so that volunteering would be gratifying to the people getting involved, and simultaneously wouldn’t just be a one-sided effort for heritage – we want it to be a developing and educational experience to the participants.
Both to us and our project partners, engaging volunteers in protecting and popularising cultural heritage is an important aspect of our activities. However, models and good practices in this area differ significantly between countries. The goal of the exchange of good practices was mutual inspiration and discovering various models of operation. The comparison of experiences from Great Britain and Finland was very interesting. Both countries have long traditions of involving people in volunteering, but the volunteers are mainly the elderly and the challenge is to reach youth. In Croatia and in Poland it is mostly students who get involved, whereas retired people are the least active group. Thus, each partner was hoping to get inspirations for working with different age groups. To all partners it was the first best practices exchange in this area, so the project, apart from exploring the experiences of other organisations, invited the organizations to reflect on their own activities in order to accurately present them to the other partners.