10. PROGRESSION: SUSTAINING VOLUNTEERS' DEVELOPMENT
10.1 After induction, volunteers continue to benefit from continuing development, support and training. Opportunities to progress can keep volunteers motivated, engaged and up-to-date with developments in the sector. And this translates into better opportunities for the young people they work with. Volunteering can open up new horizons. And for some volunteers this may mean moving on to volunteer with other organisations, taking up new roles or considering youth work as a career path.
10.2 Many volunteers may not wish, or need, to commit to formal training courses but will still benefit from on the ground volunteer management support and by learning from other volunteers. Mentoring can be particularly effective and tailored to an individual's particular needs, whether that be for a new volunteer in a new role or for an experienced and talented volunteer keen to develop specific skills to facilitate a new career or career development. Mentoring approaches are frequently adopted in delivering youth work and can be adapted to support the volunteer network as well.
The Outcome we want:
For volunteers to learn from each other and feel supported in their role.
The Action we propose:
- We will ask Youth Scotland, building on existing programmes, to develop a 'mentoring model' resource that organisations can adopt to support and develop their volunteers.
10.3 As it is important for individual volunteers, there is also extensive knowledge and expertise around in organisations. We have asked YouthLink Scotland to work with Youth Scotland to look at the potential of linking larger organisations with smaller organisations, to learn from them and tap into their wealth of expertise. This may also indicate where there is capacity in larger organisations to open up training events to local organisations which may not have the capacity to put on events as frequently.
The Outcome we want:
For organisations to learn from and support one another.
The Action we propose:
- We will ask YouthLink Scotland to work with Youth Scotland to set up a pilot mentoring scheme for smaller organisations to receive support from larger organisations. Pairing up organisations may depend on the specific development goals at a particular point in time.