What we do
Why Youth Volunteering?
Today an ever growing number of young Europeans (aged 18-28) are working as volunteers in development projects in the Global South. Such voluntary services are organised either by development organisations or specialised agencies from both the public and the private sector.
The young volunteers are placed in local programmes where they support communities and NGOs working on a broad range of issues: health, human rights, youth work, gender equality, education, environmental protection and many more.The huge interest among young adults in working as a volunteer in a developing country is based on a wide variety of motivations. However, the majority of them is interested in gaining insights into other cultures and living conditions and they are eager to learn more about our increasingly globalised world.
Therefore, most of these programmes follow a twofold approach: learning about global interdependencies for young Europeans and helping communities in the Global South based on the principle of “help towards self-help”.
Changing the mind set of people at home
The volunteers’ interest in global development issues certainly does not stop when they return to their home countries. These young adults have a huge potential to act as mediators between cultures and thereby raise knowledge and awareness of development issues in their home communities through personal links and relationships – especially among their peers!
Young volunteers for global development
First, we must ensure the quality of the volunteers' preparation and supervision as well as qualifying them as peer-educators after their return. If the volunteer service was not a valuable experience for these young people due to deficits in supervision and mentoring, they will not be willing to take action for global responsibility back home!
Second, they have to be acknowledged more clearly as supporters and multipliers to anchor development issues more successfully and sustainably in European civil societies: These young adults can raise interest in global issues among their peers in schools and universities where conventional methods of education and teaching may fail.
In order to improve the quality of services as a tool of global learning and with the aim of strengthening the commitment of young volunteers to become multipliers of global development issues after their return, the Hamburg Senate Chancellery has initiated this joint project “Youth for Global Responsibility. Young volunteers for global development” with partner communities and NGOs in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, and Tanzania involved in International Youth Volunteering, development education and youth work.