Volunteers and Youth Development

In our experience, outcomes for young people in Foróige are mediated through and depend upon volunteers and their suitability, availability, knowledge and skills. Two of Foróige's largest means of achieving positive youth development are entirely led by volunteers. Both have been shown to have significant positive developmental benefits for young people. Our clubs scored strongly on, increasing community awareness — belonging (McGrath Reference McGrath2012), while our Big Brothers Big Sisters mentoring program had significant benefits on self-esteem, school retention, resilience and more (Dolan et al. Reference Dolan, Brady, O'Regan, Brumovska, Canavan and Forkan2010).

A brief true (but altered for confidentiality) story demonstrates this. John, describing his experience of residential and foster care to a parliamentary committee, lists all the professional roles that interact with his life and then tells the parliamentarians that his volunteer ‘Big Brother’ is the one person who consistently listens to him. A combination of good programs and suitably chosen and trained volunteers makes these results possible. While these programs could be delivered by paid staff, the current scale of operation could only be achieved by large numbers of volunteers.

Conscious of this, Foróige has invested considerable resources in volunteers over the past five years, including creating a post of National Volunteer Development Manager, and new volunteer training and online resources. A survey completed by over 1,000 (almost 20 per cent) of Foróige's volunteers in 2014 sought details on many aspects of their experience in Foróige and, in the light of the six principles, has findings applicable across the sector. The factors that most impact are positive interaction with young people, connectedness/community involvement and time.

Positive interaction speaks to volunteers’ enjoyment of the energy, curiosity and vibrancy of the young people with whom they work and their sense of having a privileged relationship with the young people, focused on their happiness and development. Young people are their ‘cause’ (McKee and McKee Reference McKee and McKee2007: 60). Put simply, volunteers like to spend purposeful time with young people. This liking is reflected in the survey findings about the outcomes and activities volunteers see as important. ‘Time to relax and have fun’, ‘support from caring adults’, ‘friendship’ and ‘opportunity to work with other young people’ were the top four things volunteers believed young people could get from Foróige.

These four may indicate volunteers’ view that youth work clubs and groups may provide, at least in part, a respite from the pressures in the lives of modern young people. But more than this, volunteers are clear that conversational and recreational activities hold significant learning opportunities and clearly contribute to the achievement of Foróige's youth development purpose. When asked what activities young people learn from, the volunteers listed inter-club events (youth groups from different areas meeting and doing agreed activities), fundraising activities (such as sponsored walks and car washes), tea and biscuit time (unstructured discussion with drinks and snacks) and the club meeting (a structured gathering of young people and adults to choose and plan activities and other club business).

Foróige has been building on volunteers’ (and staff members’) liking for opportunities for positive interaction with young people, to achieve more obvious developmental and evidence-based outcomes. Over the past few years, a team of Foróige research and development staff has designed, tested and implemented a range of manualised programs covering areas such as leadership for life, community action, health and wellbeing, youth entrepreneurship, and relationships and sexuality. Some of these have also been evaluated by external professionals, overseen by university academics (Brady et al. Reference Brady, Conway, Canavan and Koviac2012; McGrath Reference McGrath2012). We provide training to volunteers in how to facilitate these programs and supply all the necessary materials. These programs give volunteers a structure for the conversations and enable them to clearly see outcomes evidenced by the observable unfolding confidence and self-awareness in the young people as well as through more formal evaluation processes. The Leadership for Life Program is the first Irish youth work program accredited by a university, earning the young person, while still in school, transferable credits of use in some college or tertiary education courses. The number of volunteers using this and the other programs started small but is growing. Anecdotal evidence suggests that volunteers facilitating these programs experience heightened role satisfaction, while the young people have enhanced experiences and measurable outcomes — a double win.

There is another win for the organisation: connectedness. Volunteers who participate in training to facilitate the programs discussed above exhibit increased connection with the organisation. Connectedness is a key factor in volunteer retention (McCurley and Lynch Reference McCurley and Lynch2013: 142). It is related to volunteer engagement, which results in what is described as organisational citizenship behaviour (Cornelis et al. Reference Cornelis, Van Hiel and De Cremer2013) — behaviour that goes beyond the basic requirements of the volunteer's role. Foróige and other youth organisations rely on engaged volunteers to fill governance, peer support and other roles. This increase in extra-role behaviour is evidenced by our volunteer survey (Foróige 2014), which indicates that the volunteers who remain longest in the organisation are often the busiest and most satisfied.

Foróige volunteers also promote young people's connectedness to community, which is Principle 4. This is the basis of Foróige's perhaps inaccurately titled Citizenship Program. Our volunteers, drawn from the local community, lead the young people in the Foróige Citizenship Cycle. The cycle involves studying the community to become aware of its needs, taking action to meet one of those needs, then evaluating to see how the community has benefited and what the young people have learned; often leading to identifying more needs and so into another cycle (Brady et al. Reference Brady, Conway, Canavan and Koviac2012). We have an annual Youth Citizenship Award for groups and individuals, currently sponsored by the Aldi retail chain, which acts as both an incentive to get involved and as recognition for achievement. Volunteers’ local knowledge and connections are vital to the operation of this citizenship program. As importantly, involving young people in leadership, decision-making and action on matters that interest them contributes to their retention in Foróige and keeps open to them the other program opportunities it has to offer (Bowden and Martin Lanigan Reference Bowden and Martin Lanigan2011).

Irish society has changed enormously. Twenty-five years ago, we were one of the last countries on the planet to legalise divorce, yet in 2015 we were the first country to introduce same-sex marriage by a vote of the people. Our volunteers’ knowledge of the changing priorities and needs of the young people in or joining Foróige strongly influences policy development and practice in the area of inclusion — Principle 3. Most recently, the experiences of our volunteers seeking to involve young people with autism has led to new guidance and procedures on this, designed by a joint staff and volunteer working group.

Time is at the nexus of many volunteering characteristics. Time constrains, concentrates, and challenges. Today, a youth worker's volunteer time is less freely given, but is instead consciously and carefully invested in one opportunity from the many on offer. As one volunteer put it, ‘I want to volunteer where my presence is an asset but where my absence is not a liability.’ The volunteer needs to know what the return on their time investment will be. The return may be the positive interaction with young people and their contribution to youth development; it may be that their own child now has an opportunity to participate or perhaps it may be experience for the volunteer's future career plans. Whatever the return, youth organisations must focus on the legitimate needs of volunteers so as to retain and engage them (Russell Reference Russell2014).

Time constraints present challenges that must be overcome if we are to continue to benefit from large numbers of youth work volunteers. Compliance and legislation are increasingly taking more of the limited time volunteers are usually prepared to give. In the past number of years, legislation on data protection, lobbying, charities, mandatory reporting of child protection concerns, club standards compliance and police vetting have all impacted on how volunteers carry out their role. Organisations must find ways to make compliance with these laws and standards as time efficient as possible for the volunteers, so as not to negatively impact on the volunteer's willingness to engage. Similarly, the growing number of volunteers who don't want to be involved every week, but instead want to be on a rota, can cause difficulties in fostering developmentally positive relationships with the young people.