Volunteering is an important means for (young) people to develop themselves, by building new relationships and gaining a whole set of life skills that can improve their employability. It serves to gather important experience in unknown fields, to develop social, personal and organisational competences.

Today the competences acquired in volunteering are seldom assessed and validated. At the same time, employers express the need for certificates or portfolio to evidence volunteers’ skills. The Job Bridge project aims to address this gap by offering the means for educational providers dealing with volunteers to assess their volunteers’ competences and to support their learning paths. Job Bridge will develop a fully-fledged user-centred approach for validating non-formal and informal learning processes in volunteering activities, including a well proven web-based documentation, both for learners and those supervising them, the “facilitators”. By integrating this tool in their management, organisations will be in capacity to support their volunteers as they will become aware of the learning outcomes to be developed. At the end of the process, they will be delivered a certificate validating such competence.

The main target groups of the project are:

• Volunteers
• Volunteer-based organisations and adult education centers: “facilitators” who will use the tool to support their volunteers (HR managers, directors, project managers, etc.)
• Employers
• Decision makers as policy recommendations will be shared as part of the revision of the Europass and European Key Competences Framework

Main outputs to be produced include:

• Stocktaking report: analysis of available competence frameworks, and validation of volunteering competences.
• Matrix for competences acquired in volunteering: set up as a reference systems of competence levels and a catalogue of assessment methods.
• Guidelines for a Competence oriented learning approach: outline prototypical learning pathways as case study examples for the guidelines.
• Open learning environment: developed as a rich open learning resource connected with a state of the art validation software.
• Job Bridge training course: the course is an active learning event with a focus on concrete development.
• Certification and Labelling (badges): develop the interfaces to available passes and insert the learning outcomes in certificates.
• Report on the pilots: comparative reports on the pilot including conclusions & concrete acting recommendations for stakeholders.
• KA1 course for professionals in volunteering: a specific course offer and a network will be created for volunteering providers.

The project is coordinated by the BUPNET and will be implemented by a consortium of eight partners from seven European countries: DE, FR, BG, BE, IT, ES, and UK.

Project Website : https://job-bridge.eu/