2.8 Raising awareness about youth volunteering opportunities
On this page
On this page
Information providers
Support Point for Voluntary work
The support point for voluntary work located in the Ministry of the German-speaking Community provides support to voluntary activities and initiatives launched by people in the German-speaking Community. Their support consists of advice, information and training. In addition they promote volunteer work by the annual "Volunteer’s Market".
In addition to regular workshops and information events, the support point for voluntary work offers personalized advise on request. This also includes the placement of people interested in volunteer work but don’t know how and where this is possible.
A dedicated website offers regular updated information, policy papers, good examples, concepts and methods for volunteering. Organisations can present themselves and their work through a dedicated web-based exchange platform for volunteering, in order to attract new volunteers. At the same time, it provides an overview of the various possibilities of volunteer work in the German-speaking Community for interested citizens.
The youth information centre
Providing information about (inter)national mobility for young people is part of the tasks that the youth information centre has (Jugendinformationszentren). So there is always a lot of comprehensive and updated information for young people on this topic available.
The youth information centre is a non-profit organisation with an administration council. It serves as sending (since 2000) and hosting organisation (since 2004) for EVS.
Its target public consists of young people between 12 and 30, but also of youth workers (with whom it has a direct and regular contact), parents, teachers and non-governmental organisations.
Its field of activity focuses on different areas: work, profession, leisure time, social matters, sexuality, rights, media and European matters. Besides that, they write and edit their own information material in form of brochures and leaflets. The content of this material is always up-to-date and relevant to youth matters.
They inform about these topics, but also go out to run workshops in schools, youth houses, etc.
With their participation in the European Solidarity Corps, they offer young people of the German-speaking Community the chance to go abroad as well as foreign young people the chance to get to know the German-speaking Community.
The Youth Office
The Youth Office (Jugendbüro) has a central role in informing on (inter)national mobility for young volunteers. The Youth Office is a non-profit organisation situated in Eupen. As a service provider for the youth sector in the German-speaking Community, it advises youth organisations on an administrative and pedagogical level and deploys staff for the Council of the German-speaking Youth (Rat der Deutschsprachigen Jugend, RDJ) and youth work. It administers national as well as international programmes and provides training opportunities for specialised staff in the youth sector.
The Youth Office was appointed as the National Agency for Erasmus+, the European Solidarity Corps in the German-speaking Community of Belgium.
Key initiatives
Training on volunteer management
The biggest challenge in volunteering lies in different expectations on forms of voluntary activity and the mismatch between expectations of today's volunteers and what organisations have to offer. To address these issues, the Ministry of the German-speaking Community organised trainings on volunteer management, with emphasis on organisational and staff development. These training opportunities are aimed at board members and managers in organisations, associations and projects. The concept allows association boards to introduce change management processes in the association and it's based on the general concept of organizational development.
Information sessions
Regular information sessions, entitled "Ich hab da mal ne Frage ...", are organized every year to advise on NPO legislation, tax law and insurance issues.