Many research shows that organizations and enterprises are interested and see reciprocal benefits from involving young people as volunteers in their program activities. Volunteers are young people who are personally interested in volunteering and students for whom volunteering is part of their educational development. Depending on their work and accomplishment, the volunteers have an opportunity to receive financial benefits.
Young people can be trained via non-formal education methods, which develop their critical thinking about the importance of youth participation in society. They can acquire new or develop their skills and entrepreneurial competencies to boost their employability.
According to various indicators, state education in many countries is assessed as not influential or innovative, but rather outdated, which means that the incompatibility the education system with the labour market (for example in Macedonia) is one reason for the emergence and maintenance of structural youth unemployment. The educational system often is not enabling young people to learn how to incorporate the needed market practices and work skills and how they contribute to the change and the improvement in the social and economic processes in their countries.
By volunteering, young people can gain important experiences, can stimulate their creativity, activism, mobility and develop other key competencies, such as the necessary set of soft and hard skills needed on the market.
Zvonko Dimoski, Local Action Group AGRO LIDER