Ever Thought About Young People and Volunteering?

A practical checklist for organisations involving young people as volunteers

• Target more information about volunteering opportunities at young people to help them make better choices.
• Use positive images of volunteering (and less stereotyping) to attract younger people to your organisation.
• Make volunteer opportunities attractive and appealing to young people (Variety, Fun).
• Create clear, progressive and varying volunteer roles for young people.
• Flexibility of volunteering (time and commitment) is important to reflect the diverse range of things which may be happening in a young person’s life.
• Make sure volunteering provides benefits to young people in terms of skills, new challenges, work experience and so on.
• Ensure that young people feel valued and respected by others they may be volunteering with or for.
• Make your volunteers feel empowered and consult and involve them in the development of their volunteering.
• Provide a friendly and relaxed environment for young people to work in, with support from an identified person when they need it.
• Ensure recognition of what young volunteers do, either by providing accreditation in the form of a qualification or simply providing a reference or record of achievement, stating skills and experience gained while they were volunteering.
• Make sure young volunteers are never out-of-pocket.
• Follow good practice in management of volunteers in all instances e.g. volunteer policy, recruitment and selection, induction, training, support and supervision.
• Be creative and consider if there are tasks within the organisation which individual young volunteers or a group would be able to undertake and run as their own project, with back-up support.

for more information and resources on youth volunteering please visit our downloads and resources page.