Volunteergration

The aim of our project Volunteergration is to facilitate the way to social commitment for refugees and to enable them to make an active contribution to society from the very beginning.

Social commitment enables refugees to go about a meaningful activity, especially when they are not allowed to work or study. Activities focusing on the common good allow refugees to transform from a stigmatised aid receiver into someone who offers help to others. Additionally, social commitment represents an opportunity for refugees to leave the every day life at the refugee shelter behind and to make contact with locals, apply and improve their German skills or open doors for employment opportunities — crucial steps for a successful integration. Steps that Volunteergration shall encourage and accompany.

In contrast to many initiatives for refugees, Volunteegration is not an exclusive project for refugees aimed at only this target group. On the contrary, it is our aim to welcome them from the very beginning into our already existing volunteer community. In doing so, we make use of existing resources using our volunteering platform vostel.de as a tool to pave ways into volunteering and social commitment more easily. vostel.de already unites on the platform more than 3.500 volunteers — with and without a refugee or migration background — from 119 countries who get together in more than 140 charitable projects in Berlin and Munich.

With the help of our project Volunteergration, we want to approach people with a refugee background more systematically informing them about volunteering and social commitment through different communication measures, assisting them and putting them in contact with relevant projects.

In contrast to many initiatives for refugees, Volunteegration is not an exclusive project for refugees aimed at only this target group. On the contrary, it is our aim to welcome them from the very beginning into our already existing volunteer community. In doing so, we make use of existing resources using our volunteering platform vostel.de as a tool to pave ways into volunteering and social commitment more easily. vostel.de already unites on the platform more than 3.500 volunteers — with and without a refugee or migration background — from 119 countries who get together in more than 140 charitable projects in Berlin and Munich.

With the help of our project Volunteergration, we want to approach people with a refugee background more systematically informing them about volunteering and social commitment through different communication measures, assisting them and putting them in contact with relevant projects.

Created in 2015, our volunteering platform vostel.de already reaches refugees — 5% of our community have a refugee background and in many cases these people have started to engage actively in social projects just after their arrival in Germany. In discussions with these same people, we learned that the driving force motivating them to become a volunteer was the desire for proactive integration.

As volunteering is a little common activity in many refugees’ home countries, it also represents the least obvious opportunity for refugees to make this desire a reality.

Therefore, together with Volunteergration we want to make social commitment and volunteering known to many more refugees by making it a central element for our work at vostel.

In doing so, volunteering shall be communicated as a meaningful transition activity for the short-term but also as an opportunity to make an active contribution to society in the long-term.

Supporting Volunteergration helps to

• promote volunteering as a measure for integration that so far has received too little attention.
• support refugees in their transformation from those receiving help to those providing it.
• increase and add new perspectives and competencies to the pool of “new volunteers“ that social organizations have access to.

With your support YOU can directly contribute to making our community and Volunteergration a role model and to making migration be seen as an enrichment for our society.

The financial resources from the crowdfunding campaign will be invested in a comprehensive activation program — initially in Berlin and Munich — comprising among others the following action points:

[* ]the targeted address and counseling of refugees in (temporary) refugee shelters, residence halls und community centers.

• the organisation of open informational events
• the creation and distribution of multilingual information material (such as a “volunteer guide“ as well as a “volunteer dictionary“)
• the development of a mutlilingual website
• the consulting and training of non-profit organisations with regard to working with volunteer refugees

The following costs will arise

• costs for materials and print
• costs for translation projects (preferred in collaboration with refugees with good German and English skills)
• the search and application for subsequent funding for the sustainable development of the project