Focus Group on Safe & Informed Volunteering (SIV)

On the 23th of June, our team of international volunteers organized a focus group about the European Solidarity Corps (ESC) volunteering. Indeed, it was about how to improve Constanta’s attractivity regarding this matter. By the way, the event gathered participants on site at our office but also online via a video call.

Improving Constanta’s attractivity for volunteering

Firstly, this focus group was part of the Safe & Informed Volunteering (SIV) project, in partnership between 4 partners from 3 countries (Spain, Romania and Portugal). In short, its main objective is to promote European volunteering. This would be done through a platform which will provide accurate information regarding the places where the volunteering projects are implemented.

Therefore, after presenting what is the ESC and the SIV projects, we asked the participants to answers some questions:

• 🧑‍💼 What are the reasons why ESC volunteers would choose an organization? What could be the unpleasant sides?
• 🚩 What are the reasons why ESC volunteers would choose a city/country? What could be the unpleasant sides?

In turns, both online participants and those who came physically shared their answers orally. To be clear, some of them were ESC project managers, others were former, current or aspirant ESC volunteers.

Finding the right criterias to inform volunteers

However, this first round of questions were not the main questions we needed to be answered. 

Above all, our goal was to find specific criterias that every city & organization would need to mention on the SIV platform. For example, the typical schedule of the organization, the Average cost of one week of groceries, addresses of bars in the city, the level of insecurity, etc. Consequently, we also asked those final questions:

• What the ESC volunteers should know about the organization they will join?
• What the ESC volunteers should know about the country they will live in?
• What the ESC volunteers should know about the city they will live in?

In the end, we gathered relevant criterias from the participants. Among those: Contact person in the organization, Current organization members, Country’s rules and mentality, Country’s ethnic groups, Country’s stereotypes, City’s public transportation, City touristic points, etc.

In conclusion, this workshop achieved its goals to find criterias for the incoming SIV platform! However, our unstable internet connection made the exchange via video call difficult. We’ll improve this part for our next online/offline event! 😊

Location: Team 4 Excellence office, Constanta
Date: 23th of June, 2022