Description
The project responds to the low level of participation of children, youth and adults in Romania in structured, national and long term volunteering activities that can stimulate citizenship and community involvement. NHF developed in 11 years a structured model of community involvement through volunteer activities (IMPACT) that develops civic and moral competences for volunteers, addressing the central cause for the low level of participation among youth and adults in Romania in the community, namely the low level of social capital. Thus, we propose as objectives for this project: Developing and empowering IMPACT structured volunteering program, from 4 regions of Romania; Increase the involvement of 1,788 youth and adults in IMPACT volunteering program; Increase the recognition of skills acquired through volunteering and their impact on personal and professional development of children, youth and adults; Empowerment and awareness of over IMPACT 1,800 volunteers
Summary of project results
The problem from which “Connect to your community!” started was the low participation of children, youth and adults from Romania in long-term structured volunteering programmes with a national area of intervention. At the end of this project, the organisation has 2,176 volunteers constantly involved in 60 community initiative clubs at national level. The most important activities of the project were: opening 10 new volunteering clubs (selection of volunteers, concluding partnerships with schools in which the IMPACT programme is implemented, organising a strategic meeting with school management), organising trainings for teachers using the IMPACT methodology (experiential education), organising competitions of community service learning projects for IMPACT clubs through which volunteers could get financial support to put their ideas into practice, improving tools for assessing the learning that takes place after participation in voluntary activities, implementing a campaign to promote the IMPACT volunteering movement and a national event to share best practices in volunteering. The main results were: - clubs managed to implement 93 community service learning projects, 38 more than the ones proposed through the project; some of these projects were implemented by the IMPACT clubs with their own funds; - 4 functional regional volunteer centers that offer consulting services to IMPACT volunteers; - A self-assessment tool (IMPACT Passport) developed and uploaded on the online portal; - A national campaign to promote the IMPACT volunteering movement, which contributed to increased affiliation to the programme; - Creation of a promotional clip on the IMPACT movement, promoted primarily online; - Volunteer management tools built or upgraded together with project partner: Pro Vobis - National Resource Centre for Volunteering.
Summary of bilateral results