CASE REPORT
RIGA
Prepared by
Education, Culture and Sports Department of
Riga City Council
on behalf of „My Generation”
Local Support Group
Contact persons:
Ruta Masaļska
Phone: +371 67181383
E-mail: [email protected]
Dmitrijs Zverevs
Phone: +371 67181499
E-mail: [email protected]
Riga, March 2011
1. The case
In the last years, especially due to the effect of the economic downturn, employers in
Latvia have started paying extra careful attention to competences and qualifications of
their employees. As quality of education system in Latvia is being judged quite
controversially, the main attention in the recruiting process is now being paid to
previous experience of wannabe employees.
This creates particularly challenging and competitive environment in the labour market
for young people (according to official data, in third quarter of 2010 32 % of
economically active young people in Latvia were unemployed, in comparison to ~40%
in the beginning of 2010).What makes it even more complicated for a young person to
find a job, is that quite few have a noteworthy paid job experience.
However, quite a lot of young people have been active in NGO sector and in
volunteering, which often has given a chance to develop just the same skills and
competences (especially, the soft ones) as a paid job might have offered. As
recognition of non-formal education is in its early phase in Latvia at the moment, “My
Generation” Local Support Group in Riga decided that it can contribute to the
society’s perception of informal learning by developing a model how to document
volunteering experience of individuals in NGOs, as well as in state and municipal
institutions.
So, the development of the model set two main goals:
 to provide an easy, self-sustaining and freely accessible methodology for
organizers of voluntary work to document input from a volunteer towards the
goals of the organisation / institution, as well as results of his / her learning
process within voluntary work (developed skills and competences);
 to create better understanding in the society in general (and in business and
education communities in particular) of learning potential that volunteering
and participation in NGO sector provides for an individual (especially for
young people and socially excluded groups).
From this point of view launch of the certificate for volunteering experience and
evaluation of results of six months long pilot phase has been inscribed in the official
calendar of the activities European Year of Volunteering (2011) in Latvia.
However, joint effort to develop the certification model was started by the LSG
already in 2009. Since then there has been a series of workshops, meetings and
consultations that ended up with current version of the model (see annex 1 and 2). It
will be officially approved (with slight amendments, probably) in the second part of
March 2011.
Initially developing a standardized certification model was an interest of youth
organisations (with Red Cross Youth starting the discussion). Further on the number of
players involved in the dialogue grew up to 27 – different NGOs (with a high
percentage of youth organisations), 3 national ministries, 3 departments of Riga City
Council and Latvian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Even though necessity of something like the certificate was acute for several players
for a long time, “My Generation” provided a neutral platform for different
stakeholders to come together and debate on an equal basis. Therefore the model and
the outlook of the certificate have experienced several noteworthy transformations
keeping the focus on making the system as little bureaucratic, as possible.
One of the most important learning points for the involved players was that even
within the same sector (NGOs, for example) understanding of what volunteering is
differs greatly. So, quite a time was spent to create a common understanding on the
notions. In terms of time this discussion took place simultaneously with national
debate on the notions and regulations, while preparing to the Year of volunteering. So,
we would like to believe that to a certain extend “My Generation” has also affected
issues on national level in this field.
What is more, it became also clear that many players who actually involve volunteers
in their daily operations lack comprehensive knowledge on how volunteering should
be organised in an organisation and what support volunteers need. To address these
challenges several organisations have launched projects to develop methodology and
documentation sample packs for different types of organisations and institutions. So,
when this work will be over, the certificate will be included into the guidebooks as one
of the chapters.
2. Opinions of participants
During the last discussion on the outlook of the certificate, in which mostly
representatives of charities and youth organisations took part, we asked two leaders of
organisations to share their opinion on the necessity of the certificate.
Here are the scripts of their comments. Together with a little visual glimpse from this
meeting, they can be seen also online:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mimgh_4ZMkY
Ilze Grīntāle, member of the board of NGO “Volunteer.lv”:
„Today we were discussing certificate for voluntary experience. I think it was a very
important meeting, because we heard very diverse views and opinions from different
organizations. Young people can volunteer in different situations, organizations and
projects. And it is not easy to evaluate in the same manner their work. I think that
today, discussing all these aspects, we got very far and agreed on a common form of
certificate for voluntary work experience.
For me, as a leader of an organization, it will help to create a full picture of the impact
of volunteers in my organization – in scope of 1 year or several years.”
Līga Efeja, president of youth organization “YMCA Riga”:
„Certification of voluntary work could be very useful for youth. Especially for those,
who are just starting on the labor market. If you don’t have any other experience then
just going to school and studying, it’s not enough for employers. If you can prove (and
the certificate is a credible way to do that) that you have had another useful
experience, this definitely has to be shown. I also think certificate can raise prestige of
NGOs as well, because the employers would see that organizations are doing a useful
job and there’s something to learn in this process. The way how they see non-formal
education, NGOs, youth organizations or civil society organizations could change. At
it would help also us – those involved in these activities.
Today’s discussion itself was very interesting. We had different views coming from
young people, from Ministry of Education, from Youth Department. I’m looking
forward to see, how the certificate is going to be improved, to be as useful for youth,
as possible.”
3. Visual glimpses of the process
Please find attached some photos from the discussions and meetings dedicated to the
development of joint model for certification of voluntary work experience.
Guidelines for certification of volunteering experience
(Translation from Latvian)
I. General issues
1. Guidelines for certification of volunteering experience (further on in the text
– guidelines) define the procedure for documentation of one’s experience that was
gained while performing long-term voluntary work in an association, fund, as well as
in state or municipal institution (further on in the text – organizer of voluntary work).
2. One’s volunteering experience is certified by issuing a certificate that is
prepared according to the unified template (further on in the text - Certificate).
3. Organizer of voluntary work takes a decision if a Certificate prepared
according to the Guidelines should be issued to a volunteer. The Certificate can’t be
treated as the only form of documentation of volunteering and can be issued parallely
with any other methodology used by the organizer.
4. According to these guidelines voluntary work is any work or service
performed free of charge by an individual who is not employed by the organizer of
voluntary work and that contributes to welfare of the society.
II. Aim of the certification
5. The aim of the certification is to provide the third parties with clear,
comparable and trustable information about duties fulfilled by a volunteer in the
interests of a particular organiser of voluntary work, as well as about time spent for
volunteering and skills developed while performing voluntary work.
III. Procedure of certification
6. Organizer of voluntary work issues the Certificate in the end of volunteering
period or at volunteer’s demand.
7. Certificate can be issued for a period that isn’t shorter than 120 hours of
performing voluntary work.
8. Lai ensure appropriate amount of information for issuing a Certificate,
organizer of voluntary work throughout the volunteering period takes the following
records for every volunteer:
8.1. date of volunteering;
8.2.
8.3.
8.4.
number of hours spent for volunteering;
place where the voluntary work was performed;
fulfilled duties.
9. The Certificate is prepared electronically, in duplicate. One of the copies is
issued to the volunteer. The other copy is kept in the records of the organizer of
voluntary work for at least 2 years.
10. Boxes 18 and 22 are filled in by the volunteer and organizer of voluntary
work together:
10.1. Duties performed by the volunteer in compliance with the assignments of
the organizer of voluntary work are indicated in box 18. If the duties were performed
within a particular project, the name of the project can be also indicated in box 18;
10.2. Skills and competences developed by the volunteer while implementing
the tasks issued by the organizer of voluntary work are indicated in box 22 (especially,
language skills, IT literacy skills, organizational skills, social skills).
10.3. In case competence level of the volunteer noteworthy exceeds the level
of skills necessary to perform particular voluntary work (i.e. the volunteer acts as an
expert), box 22 of the Certificate can be omitted.
11. Certificates issued by the organizer of voluntary work are registered. The
register of issued Certificates is kept in the records of the organizer.
12. Organizer of voluntary work is the only party liable for the genuineness of
the data in a Certificate.
13. Guidelines, form of the Certificate and example of a filled-in Certificate is
publicly available at www.e-skola.lv.
Annex II