Mr. M is 72 years old and a retired market research manager. Once a week he works as a volunteer for a neighbourhood project which offers after-school care for kids from socially disadvantaged families - in particular those with migration backgrounds. Each week, one afternoon Mr. M dedicates his time to school children, helping them with their homework, in some cases he supports them in learning German or he offers them some leisure activities. He is very motivated to do something useful for the people living in his neighbourhood, especially for children and migrants.
With his engagement, Mr. M is one of tens of thousands of senior people in Europe who use volunteering activities to stay active, to contribute to the community and to share their experiences with others – often younger persons.
But it is not only the others who can benefit from senior volunteering engagement – there is also a benefit for the volunteers themselves. With each situation when people act together and engage in new tasks and experiences collectively, they can learn from each other. This is why volunteering is considered as a means of informal education.
Senior volunteering plays a key role in our society and demands exposure and recognition! Yet reliable and convincing methodologies for the assessment and validation of the impact and outcomes of senior volunteering are missing. By developing a tailor-made competence assessment system the EU project RIVER (Recognition of intergenerational volunteering experiences and results) aims at making learning outcomes of senior volunteering visible and thus add to senior volunteers’ motivation and sense of achievement.
At the moment the RIVER methodology is tested in five European countries in different volunteering settings like intergenerational culture projects, social neighbourhood initiatives, a senior volunteering university, etc..
Read more at www.river-project.eu
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