The aim of the project was to provide up-to-date, professional support in the field of volunteer management tailored to volunteer coordinators from the youth sector. The Erasmus+ strategic priorities (inclusion, sustainability, digitalisation) in the field of volunteer management were examined. We produced an online practical guide with the involvement of peer volunteer coordinators and organised a practice-broadening workshop to introduce the guide and to study good practices. Volunteer Management 2.0 project aimed to highlight the importance of volunteer coordination and new ways of organising volunteers, adapted to the language and mindset of young people. Partner organisations working with young people and coordinating volunteers in 3 countries have gathered experiences and solutions. Later good practices have been put into a story, suggested by the young participants, and published in a way that is enjoyable and understandable for their peers. Already during the project, several young volunteers have joined the organisations, but we are confident that the long-term goal of increasing the number of local volunteers and ESC hosting will be achieved by all three partners after the project.
The decision of the project was based on the evidence that the volunteering rate of young people aged 15-29 is below the EU average in all partner countries. Taking into account the partner organisations' own experiences, each organisation identified the need to modernise volunteering, including volunteer management. A particular focus was on including practices from several countries to improve the youth participation in volunteering through an online guideline. The new approach to volunteer management has to face new challenges and our project provided support, solutions and best practices. We raised awareness of the need to involve target groups with fewer opportunities into volunteering, to take sustainability aspects into account and the increasing importance of digitalisation techniques in working with volunteers. We were looking for answers to the question of how an organisation can involve young volunteers in its work or how can a young person starts to organise volunteers informally, as well as how the volunteer management can take into account and integrate different aspects at the coordination level.