Vrijedim za dvoje
Start date: May 4, 2015,
End date: Jan 3, 2016
PROJECT
FINISHED
The project "I Worth for Two", whose main leader was PRONI Centre for Social Education was implemented in cooperation with 4 more civil society organizations - Volunteer Centre Osijek and P.G.D.I. from Osijek-Baranja, Oppidum from Pozega-Slavonia and Information Legal Centre from Brod-Posavina County, throughout the period of 8 months during the 2015 in the region of east Croatia. The project was based on structured dialogue between young people and decision-makers from 4 Slavonian Counties - Osijek-Baranja, Vukovar-Srijem, Pozega-Slavonia and Brod-Posavina, aiming at raising awareness of citizens, particularly young people, about the importance and value of participation in volunteer programs, community contribution and possibilities for personal and professional development through volunteering, as well as at raising awareness among employers about recognition and validation of volunteering and acquired competences gained through volunteering in order to enable easier involving of volunteers in the labour market.In order to achieve set up objectives, at the beginning of the project the survey with 1567 young people and 256 employers was implemented and then, based on results, the process of consultation has started. In this process, parallel young people and decision-makers discussed about the voluntarism throughout the 10 organized sessions. More precisely, there were 159 young people directly involved regardless of voluntary experience, their level of activism in local community or background, and as decision-makers, 108 representatives of Local Partnership for Employment and employers from targeted region. Aiming at reconcile the needs and attitudes of involved target groups, the final event - joint focus discussion on which representatives of bigger employers from east Croatia participated too, was organized on which the joint Recommendations were created.Such document, aiming at increasing the awareness about importance and value of voluntarism and involvement of volunteers into labour market, was, followed by media representatives, disseminated throughout the region on 659 addresses of employers from public, business and civil sector. In order to achieve wider impact on employers, besides raising awareness, the Recommendations were directed towards changing the employment policy among employers and stakeholders. This particularly was foreseen by advocating equal opportunities for job-seekers with voluntary experience and those with formal working experience, promotion of good practice of employment of volunteers, providing financial benefits for employers that employs volunteers and/or develop voluntary programmes through creation of state financial employment measures and by stimulating Croatian Employment Service to develop the model of voluntary experience promotion among employers, especially experiences connected with the formal education in order to raise volunteers’ employability.Additionally, through creation of new measures within the County Strategies for Human Resource Development, the project also impacted on strategic changes related to voluntarism and validation of volunteers, thus enabling further systematic development of voluntarism, as well as easier involvement of volunteers in the labour market.