Voluntarism

 

Traditionally, voluntarism is not highly rated in the Balkans, Trans Caucasus or in the Middle East. In neither of the regions voluntary work is institutionalised like in Scandinavia – there are no laws faciliting the developing of voluntarism and local sports clubs do simply not have a tradition of this nature for mobilising the local community. Working with volunteers is not just a matter of throwing a football to some dedicated persons and ask them to initiate some activities.

 

Volunteers are like any other staff. As ‘mother organisation’ you have to care for your volunteers, respect them and acknowledge their effort. And in order to do so one must of course understand the mechanisms of a volunteer’s involvement.

 

To learn more about the mechanisms behind voluntarism in Cross Cultures please clik on the links to the left.

 

 

 

 

A conservative estimation is that a school leader of an Open Fun Football
School delivers 100 hours voluntary work (five full seminar days, 30 hours football school plus preparatory work), that a coach delivers 80 hours (3.5 full seminar days, 30 hours school plus preparatory work); a coach assistant delivers 30 hours per football school; and a Street Sport Master delivers three hours per session. When applying this estimation
in the calculation of voluntary working hours delivered by our local volunteers during 2007 we reach the figures shown in the table.

 

The figures above confirms that there is a dedicated ‘force’ of coaches and leaders who love to organise football for children. And despite that we always are told by local authorities and other partners that it is impossible to supply the necessary volunteers to our activities we have only - knock-on-wood - experienced the contrary in practice.

In our cooperation with the local football clubs and national football associations in the coming years we intend to focus particularly on what the clubs and national associations should do in order to build and sustain a strong local platform of dedicated volunteers in children’s football. For instance, Cross Cultures has developed and implemented tailor-made training courses and education programmes for football club managers, club officials and local football volunteers on how to recruit, organise, motivate and keep voluntary staff. Equally important, we will continue to develop our own practices and methodologies applied in seminars and workshops and on the football pitch during the fun football schools and street sport events to sustain our own comprehensive network of local volunteers in Open Fun Football.