VOLPOWER: Enhancing Community Building and Social Integration through Dialogue and Collaboration

VOLPOWER explores how youth volunteering in sports and arts activities can serve as a mechanism for social integration. Sport and arts activities by their very nature demand high levels of interaction between participants. We believe that this interaction could help to foster, and facilitate community building and mutual understanding. In particular, we will be working with EU Nationals and Third Country Nationals in order to understand the challenges TCN’s face when settling within a new community. We hope that our research will demonstrate the power that volunteering can have in terms of empowering individuals within their local communities.

The project will examine these ideas by working with volunteers in sport and arts organisations from across Europe. The main aims of this project are to initiate youth volunteering in sport and arts related activities amongst EU and TCNs in order to explore the effects which volunteering has on an individual’s or communities’ sense of social integration.

The consortium is composed of Glasgow Caledonian University (project lead), Erasmus University Rotterdam, Austrian Academy of Sciences, EURAC-Institute for Minority Rights Bolzano, Zavod APIS Slovenia, SOS Malta, and IRMO Croatia.
 

Publications

• Carlà, A., Flarer, H., Lehner, M., Mattes, A. and Reeger, U., 2023. Volunteering as a Means of Fostering Integration and Intercultural Relations. Evidence from Six European Contexts.
  http://www.ceemr.uw.edu.pl/articles/volunteering-means-fostering-integration-and-intercultural-relations-evidence-six-european
• Mattes, A., Lehner, M., van Breugel, I., Reeger, U., Scholten, P., 2021. Where I Belong: Identification Processes of Young Volunteers in Super-Diverse Cities.
  https://rdcu.be/cy7fB
• Mattes, A., Lehner, M., Flarer, H.,Carlà, A. and U. Reeger, 2021. Fostering Youth Volunteering among EU Nationals and Third-Country Nationals. Volpower Policy Recommendations. Online: https://www.academia.edu/44980402/VOLPOWER_Policy_Recommendations.
• Mattes, A., Lehner, M., van Breugel, I. and U, Reeger, 2020. Volunteering in the super-diverse city: How young urban volunteers negotiate belonging. Discover Society Measured – Factual – Critical (Online: https://archive.discoversociety.org/2020/09/02/volunteering-in-the-super-diverse-city-how-young-urban-volunteers-negotiate-belonging/)
• Carlà. A., Flarer, H., Lehner, M., Mattes, A. and U. Reeger, 2020. The effect of volunteering on empowerment and inclusion among EU and third-country national youth: An in-depth mixed-methods research, Online: http://www.volpower.eu/the-effect-of-volunteering-on-empowerment-and-inclusion/