The link between volunteering and learning

Learning involves acquiring knowledge, skills, and values. This can be achieved through formal education, training, practical experience or self-education. Learning is always highly personal and idiosyncratic. It depends on both the potential of the learning environment and the willingness of the individual to take advantage of it.

A new body of research suggests that volunteer work can be a powerful tool in providing useful and enjoyable learning experiences. Most notably, Paul Ilsley (cited in the resource list) has shown that learning is a critical element of volunteering today. For many volunteers, this is what makes all their effort rewarding. And, the quality of the learning experience, as perceived by the volunteers, is closely linked to their level of commitment and length of service.

Whether consciously or not, most volunteers are motivated by opportunities for personal growth and knowledge and by the chance to try new skills and activities in a relatively risk-free environment. Indeed, volunteers today are becoming more aware that volunteer work can help them develop valuable job skills that can be transferred to labour market. Such enlightened self-interest is being encouraged by volunteer centres and others voluntary organizations in recognition of the fact that most volunteers are motivated by a variety of incentives.

The opportunity to build skills and gain practical knowledge can thus be a powerful magnet to attract and retain volunteers — particularly young people.

Maximizing opportunities to develop skills

“Experience is the best teacher”. While there is certainly truth in this adage, learning does not necessarily happen simply because one puts in time. Careful planning and nurturing are usually needed. So, what a motivated individual can get from volunteer service will depend on the quality of the program and the type of support received.

When voluntary organizations create a healthy learning climate for their volunteers, the potential for increasing knowledge and developing skills is enormous. Young people, in particular, need challenging and relevant opportunities to polish existing skills and develop new ones so that they can fortify the foundation for their future.

Differences in interest and ability make volunteers suitable for different tasks. The volunteer job must be meaningful to the volunteer. Satisfaction will be the highest when the assigned role is judged by the volunteer to be useful on a personal level and valued by the organization.

To ensure that young people are placed in appropriate volunteer roles, it is important to assess the knowledge, skills and interests that each individual brings to the job. If you explore all options for placement, you can match a volunteers' strengths and interests with the organization's needs and potential. Try to find the most suitable way to use their creative and inquiring minds and take full advantage of their unique talents. You might also consider developing new assignments to allow youth volunteers to develop specific skills.

A key to this approach is to bring the concept of skills into consciousness. Most people take their skills for granted and use a whole host of skills regularly without being aware that they even possess them. Yet awareness of existing skills by itself will increase an individual's self-confidence.

When you help your youth volunteers to recognize the skills that they already possess and to see how these might be further developed, you increase their chances for learning and personal growth. Show them how to identify the skills that they could acquire, would like to develop or need to hone in order to achieve their career goals. It is equally important for young people to know which skills they enjoy using and which give them the greatest satisfaction. Also, if young people are aware that certain skills are highly marketable, they will have an added incentive to develop those skills and to use them in tackling new tasks.

To help your youth volunteers unlock their own potential, it is critical to encourage them to build specific skills and to assist them in planning their learning. Try to be as flexible as possible and allow them to modify their tasks as their needs and interests change.

Effective training will provide volunteers with the skills and knowledge they need to accomplish their assigned tasks. It should be designed to fit with the individual volunteer's abilities, interests, needs, and learning style.

Training that is structured and progressive (incremental) allows volunteers to move continually through higher levels of skills acquisition. Ideally, skills should be taught in a way that goes beyond a given job and prepares the trainee to take on new tasks at a later point.

It is important to measure specific gains along the way. Try to encourage your youth volunteers to assess their own perceptions as to what skills they have developed. Get them thinking about future assignments that might develop their skills further. And, wherever possible, try to increase opportunities for young people to become involved in planning and decision-making in your organization.

The learning dimension can be reinforced by encouraging young people to interpret their volunteer experience. (This process, known as `reflection' is an integral part of the concept of service learning for students). You may wish to set aside time for the youth volunteers to talk about their experiences, either individually or in a group. Invite them to express what they have learned (that is, what they can do now that they would not have been able to do before). Discuss learning goals and encourage self-assessment of skills and interests. This will help bring their learning to a conscious level.

Developing a skills profile for volunteer positions

Whether for a volunteer or a salaried employee, a typical description of a position explains the purpose and the role in the context of the organization, indicates the level of responsibility and outlines the major tasks and responsibilities of the position.

However, if your aim is to cultivate learning and skills development, a much more detailed approach is needed. After breaking the position down into its component parts, analyze each activity to identify what types of skills and knowledge are central (that is, the minimum level of skills needed to perform the tasks). Then, determine which skills a volunteer could develop through training, whether pre-service, in-service or on-the-job. By listing these two sets of skills, you can create a skills profile for each position or task.

When considering which skills could be developed in a given assignment, you might want to highlight the skills that could be readily transferred to the labour market. (For skills with a high transfer value, see p 9 above, “The concept of skills transfer”.) This could make your skills profile a more powerful tool.

For examples of skills profiles for volunteer positions, see Appendix B.

Creating the right environment

To be successful, a youth volunteer program must be grounded in the philosophy that young people are valuable resources and can make a significant contribution to the organization and the clientele its serves. Youth volunteers must be treated with genuine respect and trust.

Everyone involved must regard young people as competent, maturing individuals who need to become more independent to prepare for their future responsibilities. Young people's involvement with adults must always be collegial, never patronizing or paternalistic. And, this is possible only when adults have faith that young people can make good decisions and carry out tasks responsibly. (Even well intentioned adults often find it difficult to give up the notion that they `know what is best' for young people and have to fight the urge to intervene and dominate.)

For a volunteer program to be receptive to young people, a climate of support is critical. Young people need structure and guidance but not excessive supervision. While young people want clear instructions on what is expected of them, they also need the freedom to explore areas that were not planned in advance. They should be encouraged to try new things and to take chances.

It is also critical that young people be given assignments that meet real needs and have real consequences — not redundant, menial tasks or `make work' projects. Wherever possible, young people should be offered a range of options so that they can chose a meaningful and challenging position that best meets their needs, interests and abilities. This includes developmental assignments that are designed to build their skills and give them opportunities for advancement.

Youth volunteers should be active partners in the process of developing or refining a youth program. Their feedback and suggestions should be encouraged on an on-going basis. Invite them to talk about their motivations, goals and feelings and to discuss their accomplishments and their problems. Encourage them to take the initiative and give them experience in decision-making. And wherever appropriate, involve them in program design and management.

To make your program even more appealing to young people, help your volunteers to discover their individual interests and talents, to recognize the skills they currently possess, and to understand how these might be used to help individuals, groups or causes. Let them know about the range of skills that could be acquired through volunteer jobs. Brainstorm ways in which they could develop their skills.

Youth volunteers must be recruited, placed, motivated, trained and supported in roles that are appropriate to their interests and abilities. Whatever their background, experience and potential, they all need to feel a sense of accomplishment and receive recognition for their efforts. To do this, careful planning is necessary.

The crucial role of the program leader or supervisor

Experience shows that the choice of leader for a youth volunteer program or supervisor for youth volunteers is crucial to success. This individual's attitude towards young people will permeate everything that goes on.

What should you look for in a potential program leader or supervisor for youth volunteers? The following qualities are clearly desirable:

• genuine respect for young people
• belief that young people can make a real contribution
• acceptance of individual, social and cultural differences
• respect for diverse perspectives and opinions
• ability to listen without judging and advise without preaching
• patience.

The skills required to work with youth volunteers are essentially the same as those for working with any other age groups: the ability to relate well with others, to communicate effectively and to motivate and empower others to perform well, in addition to specific skills in volunteer management. However, an extra measure of commitment and understanding is needed when dealing with young people.

Program leaders or supervisors must be supportive and sensitive to the pressures that young people are under today. They should also be on guard against negative attitudes towards young people in general within the organization and try to combat such prejudice wherever it appears.

They also need to be able to involve young people in positive ways. They should have the skills to help youth volunteers to build self-esteem and confidence, identify their personal goals and determine ways to reach them. Ideally, they should get to know each youth volunteer on a personal basis. This will allow them to see the potential of each young person and to provide the most appropriate opportunities and tools for self-development.

Young people tend to respond positively in situations where roles are clearly defined and power is shared. They are at a point in life when they need to assume greater responsibility in activities they are involved in. Given that youth is a time of experimentation, an understanding program leader or supervisor can have a tremendous impact on how the `experiments' turn out for all stakeholders. Ideally, the program leader or supervisor should play a role similar to that of a coach or mentor.

Recruiting youth volunteers

A powerful way to recruit young people as volunteers is to emphasize the link between volunteering and personal growth and work experience. (The brochure in Appendix C, entitled Volunteer to a Career, is a good example of this approach to recruitment.) Your appeal will be even stronger if you focus more specifically on the potential for developing skills.

Because of the enormous potential that volunteering offers, all segments of the youth population should be actively encouraged to participate. For young people who are used to a steady diet of failure in life, volunteering provides opportunities for achievement, success and recognition. For those who excel in academic and extracurricular activities, volunteer work can offer new challenges which demand a new set of skills.

A youth volunteer program should aim to attract a group of volunteers that is as varied as possible: honour students as well as early school leavers; young people from all socio-economic, ethnocultural and racial backgrounds; young people who have disabilities and special needs. Part of the power of the volunteer experience for young people is working with age-peers with whom they might not associate otherwise.

In targeting young people as volunteers, you will want to liaise with local schools and youth-serving agencies (in particular, employment and career development agencies). This will allow you to share valuable knowledge and expertise with key organizations. You might even be able to reach an agreement to share responsibility for youth volunteer program.

Placing youth volunteers

Few young people will be scared off by a challenge if they know that they will have sufficient support in facing it. Some will even be keen to tackle a tough job and receive the added satisfaction that would come from doing it successfully. As with all volunteers, the key is to find out what will appeal to them and suit their personal needs.

If you have a variety of volunteer roles available, it will be easier for you to recruit and retain young people in various stages of personal development and with different talents. In some cases, this may be as simple as parcelling the work to ensure that potential participants do not feel frozen out by lack of skills or experience.

As noted previously, it is essential to provide interesting and challenging work, not just routine tasks. Try to choose or develop assignments that are of limited duration and, if possible, have a definite product at the end. If a volunteer has specialized interests and skills to offer, you may be able to negotiate for a special project.

Ideally, you should involve your youth volunteers in planning their tasks. Begin by assessing the knowledge, skills and experience that each individual brings to the job. Then, identify the qualifications (knowledge, types of work skills and qualities) that are required for a volunteer to do the job well and what skills could be developed.

Find out whether they prefer to work on their own or as part of a team. Since peer relations can be very important, some young people may be much happier working with other youth volunteers.

Placing young people in volunteer positions means placing the `right' person in the `right' assignment. Everyone has something important to offer if you find the right match.

Legal and liability issues specific to young people

If you are just beginning your youth volunteer program, you will want to check into your organization's insurance policy for volunteers. Is the coverage appropriate for youth volunteers?

Are there conditions that would mean age restrictions for assignments? Some volunteer positions in your organization may be restricted to young people of a certain age, typically sixteen or eighteen. If this is the case, you may wish to verify the rationale behind any age restrictions to ensure that younger volunteers are not being needlessly left out.

You will also need to look into the issue of parental consent. Your organization should have a policy on this. Parental consent forms are usually required only if the volunteer is under 16 years of age, although some organizations use age of majority as the cut-off point.

For information on the principles of risk management and on legal and liability issues that apply to all volunteers regardless of age, such as police checks and driving record, you may wish to consult Linda Graff's By Definition (cited in the bibliography).

Orientation and training

It is essential for all involved to have a clear understanding of what is expected of them. You will need to define the specific tasks involved, clarify all duties, identify the supervisor and the level of supervision, and discuss working conditions. Ideally, the position description and training plan should be developed or reviewed and signed by both the volunteer and the supervisor before the assignment begins. If expectations on both sides are explicit, there should be no surprises later on.

Orientation serves to prepare volunteers for their first day on the assignment. The process is intended to ensure that the volunteers understand the context into which they are fitting and how to function within that context. Orientation can be done individually or in a group with other new volunteers. (Young people may be more comfortable with peers.) For youth volunteers, orientation should include an introduction to voluntary action in general.

During the orientation session, the goals, priorities and structure of the organization are explained. The overall project and the volunteer's specific role are described. The direct supervisor, staff members and volunteers with whom they are working directly are identified. The work schedule and the nature of supervision (daily debriefings, weekly meetings, monthly reports) are discussed. You might wish to consider asking them to list everything they would like to know before they take on their new role.

Training is more specialized and more detailed. Its goal is to equip volunteers with knowledge and skills they need to do their assignment effectively and, ideally, have a rewarding experience. It may take place before they take up their new role (pre-service training) or after they have begun the assignment (in-service training). Training takes time but the effort invested is well spent.

Specific skills and knowledge are taught in a step-by-step process. Begin by diagnosing the training needs of the volunteer in relation to the requirements of the volunteer position (ie, knowledge, a more advanced generic skill or a job-specific skill). The next step is to establish training goals and specific learning objectives that state what the volunteers will be required to do and what level of accomplishment is required. The training schedule should be realistic yet flexible.

It is also important to find out what approaches to learning work best for the individual volunteer. Some people work best with systematic instruction; others gain the most from the work experience itself. Some learn best from informal conversations with staff members and other volunteers; others prefer to study a manual on their own. Ideally, all of these options should be available.

The training method(s) should be selected carefully. These could include: audio-visual presentations, lectures, manuals, printed hand-outs, simulations or role-playing to allow practice of skills, panel discussions or small groups discussions. A combination of approaches is usually the most effective.

Training should be viewed as an on-going process. After your youth volunteers become familiar with their assigned tasks, consider offering them more advanced training. This would allow them to assume more responsibility, take on additional or new tasks and hone their skills.

Supervision and support

The purpose of supervision is to provide guidance, encouragement, support and occasional on-the-job training. Supervision may be viewed as a process of defining and maintaining effective working relationships.

Young people do not necessarily need any more or less supervision than other volunteers. The amount required does not depend on age but rather on the nature of the work to be done and the skills that the individual brings to that role. Some assignments require little supervision by definition. Others involve special situations which demand a higher level or different kind of supervision (for example, a placement that is highly unstructured, has minimum routine and requires considerable personal judgement).

Generally speaking, supervision is closer at the beginning. Then, a decision is made as to what level of supervision is necessary on a on-going basis given the nature of the assignment and the volunteer's initial performance.

It is important to be clear as to who has responsibility for supervising individual volunteers. Otherwise, young people may receive too much, too little or inconsistent supervision — any of which may cause confusion or anxiety. The supervisor could be a staff member, an experienced adult volunteer or another youth who serves as a team leader.

The type of supervision should also be defined (e.g., observation, working as a member of a team; working independently). Supervision can be done in many different ways: pre-work meetings, post-work debriefings, on-site, regular phone calls or on the request of the volunteer. Ideally, volunteers should have ample opportunity to ask questions, share experiences, discuss problems and successes and develop professional contacts. Make it obvious that you value their opinions and want to know their concerns.

Initially, some youth volunteers may be a bit overwhelmed, especially if this is a first experience at a `job' of any sort. As noted earlier, many young people have been conditioned to be passive and dependent and may thus be reluctant to take on responsibility. Peer coaches could be very effective in these cases.

To allow youth volunteers to see the results of their efforts, it is important to establish realistic goals against which achievement can be measured. You might also consider creating self-assessment tools to help young people to assess their own readiness to perform each task and to identify the skills they are developing.

Interaction with peers can be very important to young people — to share volunteer experiences (both successes and difficulties), to call on each other for support and advice and to increase their sense of belonging to a greater effort. This can also be an opportunity to socialize and make new friends. Group meetings where youth volunteers get together informally with their supervisors can be effective.

When you take time for supervision on an ongoing basis, you can usually anticipate problems early. If problems do arise, they should be dealt with openly, sensitively and constructively. Clarify the nature of the problem and then troubleshoot.

Experience has also shown that youth volunteers work better where the limits of their roles are carefully defined but a fair amount of flexibility is allowed. As a general rule, supervision should never restrict the creativity and initiative of youth volunteers.

Assessment of performance

Regular feedback and re-assessment of goals and expectations are vital. Ongoing dialogue will ensure that the needs of both the volunteer and the receiving organization are being met. Is the experience interesting and suitably challenging for the volunteer? Is the level of support appropriate? Would further training be useful? Are both parties deriving the expected benefits and meeting their obligations?

For youth volunteers, each assignment should be viewed as an opportunity for exploration — a time for young people to find out what they are good at (and perhaps also what they are not good at). Feedback, both formal and informal, allows volunteers to measure their performance against the standards set by your organization. However, it is important to bear in mind that young people need encouragement and positive reinforcement. They should experience successes and feel a sense of accomplishment.

The most obvious factor to evaluate is the quality of the volunteer's work. But equally important are less tangible factors such as the degree to which the volunteer assumes and handles responsibility, and demonstrated confidence in doing the job. It is helpful to use examples to illustrate comments whenever possible.

More formal evaluation of volunteers is usually done at the end of an assignment or at specified intervals. Normally, this takes the form of a written assess ment of performance, followed by a meeting with the volunteer. You may find it useful to ask the volunteer to do a self-appraisal before your meeting. (The Summary of Volunteer Experience and the Evaluation of Volunteer Experience forms in Appendix C could be used for this purpose.)

Recognition of youth volunteers

As with all volunteers, young people should be rewarded for responsible behaviour and identified as making a valuable contribution.

Whether tangible like the omnipresent T-shirt or intangible, recognition is critical to the success of a youth program. This can take many different forms. A positive letter of recommendation, for example, can be an important source of recognition for a youth volunteer.

Even if they are shy about receiving attention and praise, young people both need and appreciate it. When their efforts are recognised, their self-esteem gets a boost. Believing that their efforts matter will motivate them to stay involved. So, try to celebrate successes whenever they occur.

Documenting volunteer work

It is important to keep a record of key information on each young person's experience in the volunteer workplace. This will serve as a reference for their future searches for paid employment.

Your records should include: documentation on responsibilities, specific tasks, amount of time worked, dates, and performance (accomplishments and strengths). Ideally, a list of the skills developed would also be included. These documents should be signed by their direct supervisor or by the manager of volunteers. A copy can then be given to the volunteers when they end an assignment or leave the volunteer position, along with a letter of reference.

A letter of reference is a summary of the responsibilities carried out by the volunteer and an assessment of how effective the volunteer was in fulfilling those duties. If you provide details on the skills that were polished or picked up in the position, this will be a more powerful tool for your youth volunteers in their future job searches. This approach also reinforces the concept of the transferability of skills developed in a volunteer position with prospective employers. (A sample of a letter of reference that focuses on skills can be found in Appendix C.)

The Volunteer Career Portfolio

To further help your youth volunteers prepare for the future, you could encourage them to maintain a portfolio of their volunteer career. Ideally, this should include:

• the position description for each assignment
• the skills profile for these positions, if available
• performance appraisals and written progress reports
• letters of reference
• samples of their work
• a statement on training received
• a summary of their experience in each volunteer assignment or position.

You could also encourage youth volunteers to do written evaluations of their volunteer experiences (that is, the skills used, the new skills and knowledge acquired, special challenges of the position, observations and feelings) to add to their portfolio.

At the end of the assignment or specified time period, you may also wish to invite your youth volunteers to prepare a brief report on the skills they developed, the knowledge they acquired and the challenges they confronted. If the volunteer agrees, this could be passed on to other volunteers, a well as serving as a record for the volunteers themselves.

Where secondary students are involved, you should also encourage your volunteers to file performance appraisals and other key documents in their school achievement file. (Many ministries of education have initiated a policy of maintaining such records.)

All of these activities could prove to be very useful to young people in the future. The documentation gathered becomes their personal `archives', or data bank, which then forms the basis for developing résumés, preparing applications for employment and getting ready for job interviews.

Please see Appendix C for a model of a Summary of Volunteer Experience form and an Evaluation of Volunteer Experience form. You might consider giving copies of these forms to your youth volunteers to make it easier for them to document their experience.

Young people are an invaluable asset to any community. When their talents, energy and creativity are channelled into community organizations, young people from all backgrounds can make a significant contribution. When treated with respect, valued as resources and given the appropriate support, they can take on almost any type of volunteer role.

Volunteering offers great potential in helping young people build the base for a successful entry into the labour market and into adult civic life. It is a proven way for young people to:

• add to their stockpile of job-related skills;
• gain practical knowledge and experience;
• achieve personal satisfaction and success;
• develop a sense of belonging and commitment to their community; and
• learn the skills necessary to become active citizens in the future.

Both for young people and the organizations receiving them, volunteer work offers a gold mine of possibilities. As a society, we all have a stake in nurturing this kind of involvement. Young people are our future — and their future lies in the present.