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1. National Programme for Youth Volunteering

2. Funding

3. Characteristics of youth volunteering

4. Support to young volunteers

5. Target groups

National Programme for Youth Volunteering

There is no specific national Programme for Youth volunteering. The Czech Republic implements a European programme for young volunteers - the European Solidarity Corps and the Youth Chapter of the New Erasmus+ Programme. 

At t national level, only a general concept of 'Voluntary Service' exists. This concept is legally defined by the Act on voluntary service (no. 198/2002 Sb.) that came into force on 1 January 2003. Under this framework in voluntary service, from the age of 15, young people can volunteer in the Czech Republic, and from the age of 18 they can volunteer abroad. 

Data concerning the individual level or youth participation in this programme are not available. There are no short-term or long-term goals regarding the number of (young) people in voluntary service. A lists of accredited projects under this framework was published by the Ministry of the Interior. 

Key actors in the sector of volunteering performed by young people are the associations of children and youth, united for the most part within the Czech Council of Children and Youth (ČRDM) or its regional counterparts if these organizations are of regional and local and not pan-regional or state level. In practice, each member over the age of 15 has their own voluntary role within the organisation – either regularly in a specific function, or occasionally, mainly in summer camps and other events throughout the year. The member organisations of the ČRDM have a total of about 200,000 individual members, out of which around 60,000 are volunteers between 15 and 26 years old.

In addition, based on the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MEYS) best practices report from 2011, there are around 200 000 organised volunteers in the sport in the Czech Republic who ensure different activities necessary for the functioning of organised sport, especially for children and young people.

Funding

The state supports youth volunteering among children and youth associations and organisations through Programmes of the State Support of Youth Work. See details in Chapter 1.7.

Since 2003, as the national volunteering authority, the Ministry of the Interior has provided grants to non-governmental, non-profit organisations that submit a project accredited as set by the Act on voluntary service. No division of youth volunteering and general volunteering is articulated in the act. Since 2011, the support for organisations using the voluntary service framework has been stabilised at around 10 million CZK annually (ca 250 000 EUR). New funding of 7 million CZK has been added since 2025 for the development of regional volunteer centers. These are funds from the Ministry of the Interior's budget. Other funds have not been declared. 

However, specific initiatives of the Ministry of the Interior support the development of general volunteering at local level, especially with the EU Funded project 'Concept of volunteering development in the Czech Republic with an emphasis on ensuring the regional and professional availability of volunteering in the form of volunteer centres', which from 2016-2021 focused on supporting regional volunteering centres and creating guidelines for their operation. Part of the project was to create a Concept Note of volunteering development in the Czech Republic 2019-2025. In January 2025 Government approved the Concept for the Development of Volunteering until 2030.

Characteristics of youth volunteering

Youth volunteering is an important part of the Czech civil society activities. However, there are only limited comprehensive studies on this subject. Volunteering is usually discussed in general terms, rather than focussing on youth. Furthermore, legislation in this area is limited.

In the Czech Republic, only a limited source of consolidated data on general volunteering was available from the Czech Statistical Office (CSO) until June 2024, when the results of a representative survey conducted by the Czech Statistical Office in the second half of 2023 were unveiled. It was done as an additional module of questions for the Labour Force Sample Survey (LFS). Interviewers in all regions of the Czech Republic addressed respondents aged 15 and over. This survey was funded by the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic on the initiative of the Office of the Government of the Czech Republic. In 2023, 19.2% of respondents were involved in volunteering, which represents 1,662.3 thousand inhabitants of the Czech Republic aged 15 and over. 947.5 thousand women and 714.8 thousand men were involved in volunteering. Any other volunteering activity was also surveyed among respondents who were engaged in some kind of volunteering activity. The largest proportion of volunteers were in the 25-44 age group (36.3%) and the 45-64 age group (36.2%). Volunteers over 65 were 18.0% and the smallest proportion were volunteers aged 15-24 (9.5%). Respondents who volunteered in the last 4 weeks and reported the number of hours spent an average of 9.8 hours (or 2.5 hours/week) on volunteering activities. 

The survey also showed that people helped mostly in an organised way, i.e. volunteering was most often organised by a non-profit, charity, church organisation, association, club, health or social institution. The three highest ISCO categories (which include e.g. presidents or members of the boards of various associations such as seniors, Sokol, hunters, sports section, parish council; leaders of interest groups and scout sections, sports coaches, organisers of charity events, collections, but also cultural events in the municipality) represent 30% of the total hours worked (over the four weeks under review), i.e. a large volume of volunteering is a (highly) professional activity. In the context of organised volunteering, it is even 40%.

Regarding the economic value of volunteering, with a total number of volunteers of 1,662,300 and the average number of hours in the last 4 weeks converted into a year, it is estimated that volunteers contributed over CZK 47 billion through their activities to society in a year.
 

However, there is still no official public data source on youth volunteering in general, only different studies mentioned below. 

In its report on volunteering in youth field (2008), the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports stated that 'Youth voluntary activities realised in the framework of non-governmental, non-profit organisations have a fundamental significance in the Czech Republic. […] According to serious estimations, the share of young volunteers under 30 years of age is 50% of all volunteers.' 

According to the research Political participation of Youth in V4 countries, done for the national youth councils from Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary, by the sociologists from Rubeus in 2017, for the age group 16 - 24 years:

• 11% of young Czechs participate regularly in voluntary activities,
• 20% of young Czechs participate in any voluntary activity but it is rather exceptional,
• 30% of young Czechs were involved in some voluntary activities but are not anymore,
• 40% do not have any voluntary experience.

In February 2018, 3 695 non-governmental organizations were active in the field of organising activities for children and youth (CZ-NACE code 94 991, NKU 2018 according to ARES 2018). 2 219 were associations (60,05 %), 1 386 were adjacent associations (37,51 %). The rest covers other legal forms as foundations (0,05 %), funds (0,11 %), church legal entities (0,03 %) and others.  

The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports in its report on volunteering in the youth field from 2008 stated: 'according to serious estimations, the share of young volunteers until 30 years of age is 50% of all volunteers.'

A partial study was done by Frič in 2015 for the concept of the State Policy Towards Non-governmental Non-profit Organisations until 2020. He claims that the amount of organised volunteers in the CR has been relatively stable since 1991, with around 30% of the population participating in voluntary activities. According to him, the age category of volunteers between 15 and 34 years takes around 30% of the total number of volunteers. However, his data was based on different sources, which should be taken into account when evaluating their comparability.

In addition, partial data is provided by the Ministry of Health. In the Record of volunteers at healthcare providers in the year 2013, there were around 2400 volunteers who worked around 80500 hours. No data is available concerning the age of the volunteers; making it impossible to define numbers of young volunteers in health care. 

Other partial results are shown in the research done by Janíková, who carried out a questionnaire-based survey on volunteering in social services and found out that more than 50% of responding organisations had several years of experience with volunteers. A similar study by Dostál and Vyskočil from 2013 shows that one-third of volunteers working for ADRA voluntary centres were in the youth age category.

The SAFE project of the Czech Council of Children and Youth attempted in 2015 to solve the data gap problem. The goals of the SAFE project (The System of Record Keeping and Valuation of Voluntary Work as a Tool for Improving Transparency and Effectiveness of NGO Economic Management) were:

• To improve transparency in voluntary work in NGOs in two areas in which volunteering is significantly used – work with children and youth and environmental protection;
• To research the specifics of different types of voluntary work in these areas and take them into consideration during record keeping and quantification of the value of voluntary work not only directly in NGOs but also within public administration;
• To implement proven methodologies from abroad and adapt them to the Czech Republic context.

The SAFE project used the International Labour Organisation´s methodology for valuation and record keeping of voluntary work. Inspiration also came from abroad, from organisations whom already counted and kept records of voluntary work for different purposes.

This new specific methodology for record keeping of voluntary work, compatible with foreign standards of measuring and record keeping, was proposed and piloted between May 2014 and April 2015. The results were discussed with the Czech Statistical Office in order to define the methodology and to conduct a representative survey in 2023 using ILO methodology, defining a methodology for value calculation and accounting of voluntary work together with the Ministry of Finance of the Czech Republic. It has materialized in June 2024 (see the results above).

The SAFE project (2013-2015) worked with results obtained from more than 2 800 volunteers working in 34 organisations in two focus areas: work with children and youth and environment.

According to the findings of the SAFE project:

• One volunteer contributes an average 324 voluntary hours a year,
• The average hourly wage, counted by the weighted average methodology, was 143 CZK.
• In total, 2 898 volunteers carried out work worth 110 million CZK. If re-counted to all 36 861 volunteers working in the monitored youth work organisations and environmental organisations, they carried out work in the overall volume of 11 959 563 hours per year that was worth 1 717 569 564 CZK.

Interesting data about volunteering were brought by research on Civic Engagement in 2015 done by the Centre for Civic Education. Different forms of civic engagement have been researched based on a huge data set provided by a private marketing company and weighted on the whole Czech society according to the data from the Czech Statistical Office. They categorised society into six segments according to the level of individual activity of any form in last year of the lives of those individuals, and it is also possible to follow the age categories, including young people aged 15–24 years and 25–34 years of age. This study shows that young people are the most engaged part of society, especially in political activities (52.6% of the politically active are young people until 34) or as helping hands on different occasions (41.2% of the helping hands are young people until 34). Interestingly, young people aged 15 to 34 are underrepresented in the apolitical active engagements (only 33.2% of apolitically active).  

Support to young volunteers

Financial support for volunteers outside of the accredited voluntary service is an issue of the Civic Law agreement between the organisations and individuals and has thus no specific statute when this is not an agreement between those sides. There are no impacts on public social or health insurance nor on taxes.

Regarding the support of youth volunteering and volunteering in the youth sector, specific state-funded insurance is provided and managed by the Czech Council of Children and Youth. It consists of possibilities for:

1. Accident insurance
2. Liability insurance of youth organisations
3. Liability insurance of volunteers
4. Employees insurance by youth organisations

Accident and Liability insurance is provided free of charge (funded by a state yearly grant) for members of the Czech Council of Children and Youth, for members of the Regional Councils of Children and Youth and youth organisations which have been granted yearly support from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. Others can join this insurance as well, however for a small annual contribution per individual (still very favourable compared to other kinds of private insurance).

The Czech Council of Children and Youth manages the administration and public procurement on the private insurance company every three years. It brings favourable conditions for young people and youth volunteers under this Framework.

​Support under the voluntary service is another form of support. Financial support of individual volunteers in the Czech Republic is officially possible only under the voluntary service according to the Act on voluntary service, Article 5 which states:

'f) should the nature of the service require so, on compensation of costs associated with the necessary preparation for the role of a volunteer in a certain voluntary service programme of a project, on compensation of the travel costs abroad and back, on personal allowance to cover for general expenses in the place of deployment, and on provision of working equipment and personal protective equipment;

(…)

(3) The contract concluded between the volunteer and the deploying organisation on a long-term voluntary service may also include a provision guiding that prior to deployment, the volunteer shall apply for the pension insurance, should he/she meet the conditions stipulated in the special instrument of law, the deploying organisation shall pay, on behalf of such person, pension insurance premiums based on at least the minimum assessment base, should the long-term voluntary service be performed for an average of over 20 hours a week.'

                and, furthermore, as stated in article 7 of the Act a volunteer is entitled to insurance:

'(1) The deploying organisation shall, before the deployment of the volunteer to the volunteer service, conclude an insurance contract to cover the liability for damages on property or health caused by or to the volunteer in the course of the volunteer service. The volunteer shall be liable only for the damage he/she caused intentionally.

(2) The deploying organisation shall, before the deployment of the volunteer to the volunteer service abroad, conclude, based on the nature of the service and the particularities of the country of deployment, a health insurance contract for the volunteer.'

In other words, a volunteer is entitled in case of voluntary service performed under the Act no. 198/2002 Sb. as amended, to the following financial support:

• compensation of costs associated with the necessary preparation for the role of a volunteer,
• compensation of the travel costs,
• personal allowance (general expenses in the place of deployment),
• compensation of working and personal protective equipment,
• insurance to cover the liability for damages on property or health
• health insurance,
• and, if agreed with the deploying organisation, also pension insurance.

Target groups

As neither volunteering in general nor youth volunteering is regulated, there are no specific target groups. 

The only document explicitly targeting young people is the Youth Strategy 2014-2020, that defines the age group as up to the age of 30.

The Act on voluntary service defines volunteers under the voluntary service as follows:

• at least 15 years old in the case of volunteering in the Czech Republic,
• at least 18 years old in the case of volunteering abroad,
• maximum age limit is not specified.

The Ministry of the Interior's document (2013) on volunteering in emergencies states the age limit only in the form of recommendation: 'On the basis of experience from emergencies it is recommended that a volunteer is older than 15 years, ideally 18 years, especially in order to protect the volunteer as well as his surroundings against possible risks connecting with his/her involvement in aid'.