Mission Volunteer – School for Volunteers

We started with a training Mission “Volunteer” – School for Volunteers – the first activity we implemented with the participants of the project “My message in my language!”. On the topic of volunteering and its key role for the effective and meaningful work of civil society organizations, viewed through the prism of Karin Dom and personal experience of volunteering spoke Darina Raykova, Project Manager and Boryana Parveva, Communications and Volunteer Specialist. We talked about the different types of causes and how once a person commits to a cause and volunteering, it becomes part of their life. We talked about the mission, vision, goals and importance of volunteering and shared with the participants a number of opportunities to get involved in different causes and provided them with a database of websites and organizations where they can keep track of volunteer initiatives. We also provoked their interest through the prism of our personal experiences as volunteers and the causes we have supported. We were able to discuss topics such as: what it means to be a volunteer; why and how to volunteer, individual and corporate volunteering and other topics and issues that interested them. To make the training even more useful we invited an external expert – Kristina Ilieva, Marketing and Communications Manager and Career Consultant at CluneTech – a company with a strong corporate social responsibility and a long-time partner and donor of Karin Dom. Kristina was able to predispose the participants and encourage their active participation in the discussion. With Krissy, the participants discussed the importance of volunteering in finding a job; the role of volunteer experience in career and personal development and why it is important to include it on your CV. We did a practical activity together where the young people were put in the role of actually looking for volunteering initiatives – how to properly inform themselves about the initiatives, what information to look for in order to be able to make informed decisions about whether or not to get involved in a particular volunteering initiative. At the end of the training we challenged all participants to share through drawing, word, sentence or other means their impressions of today – what they learned, what they remembered, how they feel and what they want to share.

We look forward to our next meetings with these wonderful young people!