Preparatory Rotterdam meeting for INVEST

Today was the first day that we finally all sat together to discuss at length the steps that we are about to take in the new INVEST project. In the summer period we'd heard from our National Agency, Europees Platform, that we had the green light to get the project underway from September 1st onwards. And since then we have put many things into place, including a solid and strategic partnership with Centrum voor Dienstverlening (CVD), a large umbrella organisation located in the centre of Rotterdam but covering the larger Rotterdam area, including the boroughs. CVD promotes and supports volunteering in all its aspects, fulfilling the role of advisor as well as intermediary. A number of our year 2 students will support their volunteers in the development of portfolios and through that interactive process empower them and enhance their own skills.

What is INVEST about ?
INVEST stands for INvesting in your Volunteers by creating Educational opportunities Small scale and Tailormade.
The objectives in a nutshell are to invest in and support learning processes of volunteers, facilitate creation of portfolios, apply educational tools and good practices, and to acknowledge competences acquired through volunteering. The main approach is learning by doing in the local contexts, cooperating and sharing expertise and resources on a European level and collaborative work on a booklet to disseminate at the end of the project.
The project activities will result in a collection of instruments to perform a needs analysis of volunteer competence development, a collective pool of training resources, a collection of experiences in working with portfolios and the types of portfolio, tips & tricks as well as sample documents that volunteers receive stating the skills and competences they have acquired.
Learning through volunteering is still a relatively new idea that has a lot of potential as an alternative path in adult education, when it's taken seriously and when there's a willingness to invest in volunteers.
In the upcoming project meeting in Madrid all 5 partners will meet for the first time. A number of partners already know each other through the European Volunteer Centre. This is a European network of 88 national, regional and local volunteer centres and volunteer support agencies across Europe, that work together to support and promote voluntary activity.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This blog post reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained herein.