How to promote youth volunteering in organizations

Volunteering is the driving force behind many non-profit organizations, which could not carry out their work without these people. At the same time , young people are the future of society , and facilitating their participation in social reality should be a priority. However, this segment of the population often lacks the motivation to carry out tasks of this type, especially of a voluntary nature, among other things due to the difficult context that surrounds them.

But it is precisely because the current economic and social circumstances are especially difficult for young people that their participation in addressing them is essential. And one of the ways to do this is precisely through volunteering , where they can have a real and direct impact on social problems.

For all this, non-profit organizations need to face the fact that there is a clear lack of generational succession in their volunteer teams and promote young volunteering from within , so that these people can be agents of social transformation. This resource includes the keys to making this push that were detailed by Marta Toro , volunteer technician at AFEV , in the webinar  'How can we get young people involved in volunteering', by Xarxanet. 

Why is it important?

According to Toro, there are strong reasons why young people's participation in volunteering in organizations is important. First, we must take into account the individual level, that is, volunteering allows people to develop and explore their own interests and vocations. Second, these people will evolve together with society , connecting and having a positive impact on the community and strengthening it, even becoming a role model. 

The challenges of participation

Socially, youth has been constructed as a group isolated from the rest of society, creating a description that characterizes and stereotypes them as disinterested and unmotivated , on the one hand, or difficult to deal with and dialogue with , on the other.  

However, the lack of participation has little or nothing to do with these categories, explained Marta Toro, who also identified some reasons why youth volunteering has decreased so much: the culture of excellence, lack of time , inequalities, lack of information often caused by differences in communication codes and formats, the preponderance of the neoliberal individualist culture and the distrust towards organizations that often derives from all these issues. 

First step: indicators

The first phase to promote the incorporation of young volunteers into organizations is to analyze where the organization is at . To do this, it will be necessary to review some indicators: percentage of young people represented by the volunteer corps at this time, percentage of young people in the organization and the board of directors, existing forms of participation of young people in the organization and to know the means or means by which the current volunteers find out about the organization's work.

The purpose of this analysis is to have a detailed picture of the current situation of volunteering in order to, from there, establish objectives to address youth, defining the profile of young volunteers to whom recruitment campaigns will be directed.

Attraction

The first tools presented by Toro have to do with making volunteering attractive to young people . This will mean adapting to their aesthetics and communicative forms from different perspectives, so that the tone resonates with this group during campaigns.

First, you will need to use a language and aesthetics that are appropriate for social networks and the web. To do this, it is advisable to look to resources that already work: memes, simplicity, hashtags, bright colors... However, it is important to keep in mind that fashions are constantly changing , and it is important to stay up to date with trends in order to adapt your recruitment campaigns.

Where is the youth?

It is important to carry out recruitment campaigns for young people on platforms in the places where young people are , both physical and analog and digital .

For in-person campaigns, it is recommended to collaborate with institutes and other educational institutions , making presentations at centers, charity fairs and reaching out to develop Learning and Service projects.

It will also be necessary to have youth services in the neighborhood, town or city of the organization nearby . To this end, before starting the campaign it may be interesting to map the different organizations and youth services  in the area.

Finally, if social networks are important for the rest of the organization's campaigns, they are essential to attract young volunteers. You will need to be where the youth are: Instagram, Tik Tok and Twitter . It will also be important to have a phone number to answer WhatsApps of queries and doubts, among other things because there is usually a reluctance among young people to take and make calls.

Apart from all this, there are other spaces that will be important to keep in mind, such as online volunteering applications ( hacesfalta.org , Volungo , Voluntaris.cat ...) or local movements.

Accompany

To attract young people to get involved in the organization, it is necessary to lead by example , making efforts to get closer to people and break the barrier that prevents this group from approaching spaces that, in reality, have a lot in common with their principles.

This will mean, first of all, adopting an attitude of flexibility and putting the care of the people who make up the entity first. It will also be necessary to have an empowering tone , emphasizing that it is not necessary to take great actions to promote structural changes, facing nihilism. This can only be done with close, effective and constant communication : at the beginning, during the process and by offering means.

It will also be necessary for the training offered for joining the volunteering profession and developing the task to be able to be used outside of the volunteering itself.      

Recognition

It is very important to recognize the work of young volunteers , not only because those who are already volunteering will feel valued , but because it will also serve as a form of appeal .  

Toro includes different mechanisms to recognize the work of volunteers: giving back the impact generated, publishing videos on social networks that make the work visible, holding meetings and events, handing out prizes , offering certificates  or giving the possibility of validating credits (by making agreements with educational centers) and incorporating the entity into recognition programs such as Vol+ .

Community

The last mechanism that Toro mentions to promote youth volunteering in organizations is the creation of community, both inside and outside the organization . This means, first, creating an environment in the organization that is welcoming to people of all origins, ages and genders, so that it evolves into a space where people can rest from the competitiveness that prevails in society.

On the other hand, it will also be necessary to foster relationships with external agents , forging relationships with other local organizations and communities, involving young people who are already part of the entity in the process of recruiting and mobilizing young people and highlighting the benefits of this.