National Programme for Youth Volunteering

There is no National programme for Youth Volunteering in Slovenia. However, youth volunteering is part of the general National Programme for Youth 2013-2022 (Resolucija o nacionalnem programu za mladino 2013–2022) as one of eight key areas that should be promoted and developed. 

Funding

There is no national programme for youth volunteering in Slovenia, so there is no funding of such programme. 

Youth volunteering in general is funded from governmental and municipal sources or from NGOs’ own assets. The projects are mostly financed by the Ministry of Labour, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, the Ministry of Education and the Office of the Republic of Slovenia for Youth. Major funding sources for voluntary work include the National Social Security Programme, government concessions, public tenders, tax relief, municipal contributions, and Erasmus+. Additional support comes from national foundations (FIHO, sports organizations), membership fees, business donations, and sponsorships. The Personal Income Tax Act also allows 0.5% of income tax to support non-profit organizations serving the public interest.

Characteristics of youth volunteering

Many young people take part in voluntary activities. The survey “Youth 2010, The Social Profile of Young People in Slovenia” included several indicators of young people’s voluntary activities, and they all fall into the basic conceptual framework of voluntary activities and civil society participation: 1) non-formal work or activities, generally in cooperation with others, in order to deal with specific issues, and 2) membership in voluntary societies and organisations.

According to the survey, Slovenian youth are more active in activities linked to the safety and upkeep of the location where the respondent resides (68.6 percent of young people), and to youth interests and young people (67.2 percent). The data also show that around a quarter of Slovenian youth are active in firefighting societies, and just under 17 percent in the scouts. The survey checked the extent to which Slovenian youth (compared to EU-27 youth) are members of voluntary organisations. Slovenian youth are in two types of organisation that have the most members: sports/recreation organisations and cultural organisations. Among Slovenian youth the only notably lower membership is in political parties which might be due to a low level of trust in political officials and institutions, low conventional participation and so forth. 

According to the survey Youth 2010, The Social Profile of Young People in Slovenia”, 27.9 percent of Slovenian youth have already participated in voluntary activities.

The key findings of the survey "Youth 2010" can be summarised in the following points:

1. Compared to 1995, Slovenian youth are significantly more active in the voluntary sphere.
2. Out of all forms of participation, young people are most frequently involved in voluntary activities. In addition to involvement in employment and education, voluntary activities are the main mechanism for social inclusion in Slovenia.
3. In the past 15 years there has been a major increase in the willingness of students to participate in actions that improve the status of young people.
4. Voluntary activities are mainly associated with the more adjusted psychosocial development of young people. A willingness to help peers and older people is associated primarily with indicators of more adjusted development, while membership in voluntary societies is generally associated with negative indicators of development.
5. Being female, older, living in an urban environment, higher educational qualifications of the respondent and higher economic status of the family are factors that positively influence most forms of voluntarism.

 Volunteers by age (in percentages)

Source: Joint reports on volunteering in the Republic of Slovenia for the years 2020-2023 (Ministry of Public Administration)

Yearly Reports on volunteerism in Slovenia are prepared by the Ministry of Public Administration which is responsible for the monitoring of voluntary organisations, as based on the Volunteering Act. These data are based on the data from organisations that are enrolled in the official registry. It is assumed that the percentage of young volunteers is much higher, but the youth organisations are not enrolled in the registry, mainly due to the lack of financial and human resources for administration, and therefore they are not included in the official statistics.

There is data on public financing of non-governmental organisations, although not all of them are registered as voluntary organisations, based on records provided by the State Treasury cash flows, including ministries, government departments, agencies, municipalities, and other public bodies.

According to data provided by the Centre for information service, co-operation and development of NGOs, non-governmental organisations received 166.8 million EUR of public funds in 2003, which incrementally increased to 282.6 million EUR in 2015 and to 416.0 million EUR in 2020. In 2020, over 394 million EUR were allocated from direct and indirect budget users (ministries, municipalities, public agencies and institutions), 21.6 million EUR by the Foundation for Funding Humanitarian and Disabled People's Organisations (FIHO) and the Foundation for Financing Sports Organisations in the Republic of Slovenia (FSO). According to the same source, 15,198 non-governmental organisations managed to receive public funds in 2020.

Table 1: Scope of public funding of non-governmental organisations in 2009, and 2017-2020 in EUR

 Source: Centre for information service, co-operation and development of NGOs

Support to young volunteers

The Volunteering Act covers both economic and educational aspects of volunteering, including expense reimbursements and the acquisition of knowledge and experience and thus provides a measure of the educational impact of volunteering.

Reimbursable costs include travel, meals, accommodation, postage, phone calls, and protective equipment. Host organizations determine reimbursements through a formal agreement. Under Slovenian tax law, food, travel, and accommodation expenses are tax-exempt unless the volunteer receives financial remuneration, in which case both the income and reimbursements are taxed. The Personal Income Tax Act exempts documented costs for voluntary, humanitarian, cultural, and sports activities, provided they are non-profit and voluntary.

Foreign volunteers can receive expense compensation if agreed upon or covered by an international treaty, while Slovenian volunteers abroad qualify for tax-free allowances under specific agreements.

The Volunteering Act requires health insurance coverage for volunteers engaged in high-risk activities, but all legal residents in Slovenia already have mandatory health insurance. Specific laws provide insurance for firefighters and disaster relief volunteers, but volunteers generally do not receive pension, unemployment, or accident insurance.

Target groups

No specific target groups within the youth population are defined in the official documents in Slovenia apart from the Article 18 of the Volunteering Act which requires a legal representative or custodian to sign a volunteer agreement if a child is under the age of 15.

However, the promotion of volunteering specifically among primary and high school students is included in The National Youth Strategy where the proportion of people that belong to those groups are used as an indicator in measuring the voluntary activities of youth.