This is a Strategic Partnership between four youth organisations coming from different realities and working at different levels in their countries. The countries involved are Malta, Italy, Romania and Spain. The main component of this project is a research study which will attempt to discover underlying issues regarding the long-term commitment of young volunteers in the four youth organisations. This study aims at shedding more light on an issue which is common for many voluntary organisations in Europe, and thus to contribute to the available body of knowledge in the youth field. Moreover the project will include young people in every possible way, including the body coordinating the project, in parts of the research work, as subjects of the research and also the final receivers of the study outcomes. Young people will be actively involved in data collection and will receive related training through this project. The final act of this project will be another training involving 32 young people from the four organisations in a training in the use of the outcomes of the study. This will be a mixed group of volunteers, with volunteers who are involved in the peripheries of the organisations and volunteers working in more centralized decision making roles. The aim of the four organisations is that by the end of this project they will have enough evidence to come up with a sustainable and effective action plan, consisting of common initiatives to support their volunteers. The end objectives are to help volunteers live a more meaningful and formative experience within their organisations and to enable the organisations to benefit from volunteers that stay involved for a longer time, thus permitting more capacity building of the organisations, which in turn will serve better the purpose of contributing to the building of the different democracies in the different countries. The project includes also five transnational meeting over a 35-month period, which have the objective of project coordination, quality control, evaluation and contextualization of the research study. The study will be made available to the public at the end of the project.
The objectives of implementing this project were to investigate & gain a deeper understanding of the factors influencing young people's involvement in voluntary work within the organisation, & what factors drive them to stay engaged in voluntary work on a long-term basis or possibly discourage them from pursuing such opportunities. This involved a process of listening to the experiences, concerns, & aspirations of numerous volunteers across the 4 organisations. Our goal was to identify the types of support needed by volunteers to enhance the meaningfulness & effectiveness of their voluntary work for themselves, the organisation, & society as a whole. Additionally, we aimed to provide the 4 organisations with valuable insights to develop a medium-term action plan based on evidence to support & train their volunteers effectively. Furthermore, the project sought to foster a shared understanding of youth ministry among these organisations while embracing the diversity within this collaborative partnership. This was achieved through the transnational approach built on a comparative research method, adding value to the research & in extension contributing to the development of European youth work.
The four organizations identified a significant challenge in encouraging young people to engage in long-term voluntary activities, observing a trend where individuals disengage from voluntary work as they settle into life or prioritize other commitments. This disengagement leads to missed opportunities for personal growth and community service, negatively impacting both the individual's development and the organizational capacity to serve and expand their reach. This issue poses a threat to the democratic framework reliant on the voluntary sector, as a continuous decline in long-term volunteerism hinders the foundation of democratic principles. Preliminary analysis highlighted two main factors for this trend: young volunteers not perceiving their efforts as beneficial for personal and professional development, and difficulties in adapting their volunteer involvement to changing life circumstances, making voluntary work seem incompatible with their personal, educational, and professional lives. The project's main aim was to provide the organisation with evidence on which to base their plans of action and plans for mutual collaboration for the benefit of young people