COMPREHENSIVE SUPPORT OF Volunteering – WWW

The "WWW" project aims to increase the number of voluntary activities among children and youth in Poznań and to expand the educational offer for children and youth, as well as for teachers and volunteers involved in work with young people, in the field of volunteering in schools in Poznań.

With the help of workshops we aim to empower the actions of volunteers themselves/supervisors of clubs or leaders of informal groups, as well as their mentoring and networking of active volunteers. We want to provide our participants not only with theory, but also with practice related to voluntary activities.

The project will seek to enhance the acquisition of soft skills used in voluntary activities undertaken by young people. The workshops will be held in primary schools and the debates will be conducted in secondary schools. Such activities will help to understand the way volunteering is perceived by youth. Also it poses a chance for us to adapt the proposed volunteering activities to the needs of youth. The proposed mentoring and support in the field of implementation of voluntary initiatives will allow young people to have a better understanding of how to organize voluntary activities in a more efficient way. All of this thanks to the inclusion of the school community which means teachers, parent council and school governors.

The project includes the following activities:

6 different sets of activities for 3 different age groups are based on non-formal education. They aim to shape the attitude of social sensitivity among students, the willingness to social change as well as to provide the youth of Poznań with volunteering competences and the empowerment of their volunteering coordination skills.

Within the project, we will carry out:

1. Workshops for children and adolescents from primary schools “ABC of Volunteering”. By them we will introduce the various models of volunteering, promote the idea itself and encourage youngsters to get involved in volunteering clubs and volunteering campaigns in Poznań. We aim to provide them with tools and methods of effective help, as well as to teach them social sensitivity and the importance of involvement. These workshops will be targeted primarily at people who are not involved yet in any voluntary activities.
2. Debates on volunteering held in secondary schools which will allow them to confrontate comments and observations with experts in the field. Including also the socio-cultural context, exchange of good practices and planning voluntary activities. It will also help youngsters to get familiar with the offers of Poznań including the offer of local and remote NGOs, encouraging them to participate in these activities, but also teaching them how to spread the knowledge among younger students in primary schools.
3. Workshops for volunteering clubs in3 schools and mentoring programs for their guardians. The aim of the workshop will be to empower the existing clubs so that they operate more effectively, which will benefit the school community, the local community and the volunteers themselves. The workshops will cover such topics as: team communication, local activation, empowering the civic activity of volunteers, planning volunteering projects based on the needs arising during the Covid-19 pandemics. The detailed program of the workshops will be agreed together with the members of the clubs during the first meeting, so that it suits their needs as much as possible. Each club will be looked after by one of the educators from CIM Horyzonty who is experienced in working with volunteers.
4. Workshops for the current and future volunteers as a part of non-formal activities which are about to meet the development of skills and competences, the educational and substantive needs. They will show how to help specifically, how to motivate others, how to use their potential, how to take care of their mental condition and how to prevent from their “burn out”. They will also cover the knowledge of how to acquire soft skills at work with other people and how to develop one’s time management skills, also how to take part in various models of volunteering and how to draw from one’s experience.
5. Workshops for teachers coordinating volunteering clubs at schools or for anyone who wants to set such clubs up. They are going to be a response to the specific needs of teachers, showing them how this process looks in practice, how to manage a group, how to motivate, to what legal arrangements refer to, also how to organize volunteering at school. The above mentioned needs are enormous, they can be found in the activity report from the Poznań Volunteer Center 2018, where many teachers responded to surveys on volunteering in schools. In fact hey did not know how to start or they simply pointed out the need for support in this regard. The first workshop will deal with the formal aspects of setting up and running a volunteering club in the context of school, while the second one will deal with the practical aspects, e.g. specific ideas like what can be done with young people and what soft skills are essential on the labor market which could be acquired during voluntary activities.
6. Networking meetings for “Burned Out with Volunteering”, which will be held either in the Do_Wolności Zone or online, and are targeted at supervisors of volunteering clubs as well as leaders of informal groups and the volunteers themselves. They will aim to create a space for sharing difficulties, seeking solutions together, exchanging good practices and inspiring other activities.

Thanks to the training and workshops based on the knowledge and experience of people involved in the practical organization of volunteering, work with children and youth there is a great chance for effective education and general development of voluntary work in Poznań.