INVEST (International Volunteers Educational Skills Training) aims to empower young volunteers and promote volunteering in non-profit sports organisations by providing comprehensive educational opportunities.
As the functioning and wellbeing of sports organisations is highly dependent on volunteers, it is crucial to address the modern challenges to retain volunteers and motivate new people to get involved.
Surveys show that many volunteers never receive training before or during their work, often due to lack of time, budget, capacity or expertise. The project, which is aimed at people aged 17 to 30, seeks to address these issues.
Through a series of activities in an international environment, participating individuals will develop personal skills, intercultural competences and a deeper understanding of the importance of volunteering in society.
Through innovative approaches and transnational cooperation, the project aims to improve the quality of volunteering, build capacity within the partner organisations and create long-term learning and networking opportunities.
All partners are included in the project management, and each partner has a representative in the steering group. All partners have also at least one second person involved in the project who backs up the steering group representative in case of need. The coordinator and the experienced partners support the partners for the first time involved in such an Erasmus project. Each partner is responsible for their volunteers. The training and evaluation is mostly done by external Experts and an evaluator outside the partner federations.
Five main events are planned during the project.
- Kick Off Network Meeting Steering group in Italy 2025
All steering group members will meet in person in Italy. The focus of the meeting is to prepare the educational congress week and the online kick off meeting for the volunteers and discuss the timetable of the project. A meeting with representatives of FICEP will clear the main tasks for the practical training of the volunteers 2026.
- Digital Kick off Meeting for Volunteers 2025
The goal for the kick-off meeting for volunteers is getting to know each other and getting an overview about the project and the congress week in Austria.
A key focus is the input from the volunteers regarding topics they wish to see in the workshops during their theoretical training part.
- Educational Congress Week 2025
The programme for the congress week serves the volunteers’ formal and informal development. The topics for the workshops are intended to serve personal and professional development. Another focus lies on the preparation for the practical training in 2026. Key tasks are discussed, and the volunteers divide the tasks according to their interests The evaluation of the project starts this week. The evaluator accompanies and observes the progress of the volunteers on site.
- Youth Congress-Practical Training 2026
The practical training will be held during a 3-Day international youth congress together with of our partner federation of FICEP in April 2026. The volunteers will help to prepare the program for the next generations of volunteers. The practical training will include many administrative/logistics tasks the volunteers can choose during the congress. The volunteers will be guided by two persons and together with them the evaluator will document their learnings in the adapted “youth pass”. The volunteers will present their experiences to the youth committee of FICEP our international supporting organization and new volunteers of the partner federations. The volunteers will so learn in a non-formal way and can use their gained knowledge form the educational workshops. Furthermore, they have additional educational workshops on one day.
- FICEP General Assembly 2026
The volunteers will give a presentation about the project and their learnings at the general assembly of our international support organisations FICEP. To 6-12 national sports organisations from European- and 3rd countries.
Before the general assembly they will present the project in their home countries.
INVEST Educational Youth Congress
International encounters, new friendships, sports, fun and, above all, knowledge were the focus of the INVEST congress week in Niederöblarn. From 4 to 10 September, volunteers from six federations (OREL, FSCF, DJK, CSR, NBA Aquila and SPORTUNION) were warmly welcomed by steering group member Claudiu Roznovszky and coordinators Alexandra Hoffmann and Sebastian Immler.
Kick-Off for INVEST: International Meeting in L’Aquila
Partner
Main Contact Coordinator
SPORTUNION Österreich
Falkestraße 1, 1010 Wien
MMag. Alexandra Hoffmann
Phone: +43-1-513 77 14 33
E-Mail:
alexandra.hoffmann@sportunion.at
“Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.”
