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Volunteerin' Comics

2020-1-SE02-KA105-0028012020Youth mobilityfinalized
Countries: SE|RS|IT|PT|PL · Grant: €20,380
Civic engagement / responsible citizenshipRecognition (non-formal and informal learning/credits)Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment

Objectives

We started to develop the idea for this exchange, by the common thinking that young people are in a way well aware of the opportunities that volunteering can bring in their life, mostly in regards to their job opportunities, reaching the conclusion that employers give great importance to a background in voluntary work. So it comes from the selfish desire to improve ourselves on a personal and professional level, but still, it means we will do good in society, thanks to volunteering. Nowadays it is hard for young people to try to understand how to apply for volunteering and what is the most suitable volunteering activities for them since on a quick search on the Internet it is easy to get lost and confused by the thousands of results we get. Some of the young participants didn't see the benefit in the professional side of life that volunteering could bring at all, while some of them could, but found it harder to reach a position in which to decide what volunteer activity to jump into, and finally start doing it, willing to develop or improve some soft and hard skills useful also towards the search for a job. It is our belief that young people have great potential and will inside of them to do beautiful and worthful things, but it may be the case that they are not stimulated enough to take the initiative. We always try to involve them in different voluntary activities, gaining feedback on their enjoyment and personal satisfaction after they participate. We decided, together with a group of young people active in UF, to raise awareness about the value of voluntary work, especially as a boost to our employability chances, and to do that we decided, to be close to a young target group as our youth suggested us, to produce and disseminate comic strips which deal with this topic, which can be inserted in the "hot-topic" from the European Agenda since it touches deep topics like volunteering, active citizenship, and the youth unemployment. With this in mind, we decided to set as our main aim "to raise awareness among young people about the importance volunteering has in increasing employability”. As a result, the objectives of our project were: - Improve knowledge and attitudes toward voluntary work, creating awareness about the many transversal skills that can be gained from volunteering - Stimulate motivation towards volunteering as a way to personal and career development - Stimulate creativity by creating comic strips which raised awareness about how volunteering can increase employability - Foster a sense of initiative in youngsters - Promote values and objectives of the Erasmus+ Programme Through the core activity of the project, the Youth Exchange, we used various non-formal methods, group and personal development methods, to facilitate and make young people more conscious of skills gained from volunteering and how to use them from an employment perspective. Our young volunteers felt very passionate about that exchange and its topic, so they met several times to create and generate ideas about a way to raise awareness about opportunities provided by voluntary activities, related to the youth employability, but also connecting to a flexible media like comic-strips.

Project partners (5)