A good practice of validation of competences for young volunteers

By now there are 700 youths who have received a document certifying the important skills acquired, after having carried out a year of volunteering in Italy. And by 2017 there will be 1,000 volunteers with this certificate enabling them to enhance their CV and their employability.

It is one of the most significant good practices in a country that has not yet adopted a national system of validation and certification of non-formal and informal learning.

The experiment has been carried forward since 2011 by the CESV – the service center for volunteering in the Lazio region – and CPIA3 – a public school for lifelong learning.

All young participants have an age between 18 and 29 years and perform community service – a form of volunteering under Italian law under which young people commit themselves for a year in social, cultural, environmental activities, and receive reimbursement of expenses from the state.

The process that leads to identify the skills acquired by the volunteers provides a series of interviews and questionnaires. In this procedure both the volunteer and the association that hosts them in the year of volunteering get involved.

It is one of the best local practices that the VOYCE project is currently studying and which will be used to create innovative tools for validating skills of volunteers.