Tartu Volunteer Center Tuulike Mänd Member of the board

Volunteering is a fundamental building block of civil society IAVE Universal Declaration on Volunteering ● Organized volunteering is underdeveloped in Estonia. ● In spite of abovesaid, volunteering happens in Estonia.

● The initiative to promote and support volunteering comes mainly from nonprofit organizations. ● The situation is relatively good with the law making process. ● In the light of all this it is understandable, that the knowledge about the principles of volunteer work is low in Estonia. ● As with many things, it is more easy and useful to teach new things and attitudes to young people.

The results of the study ● In general, the teachers defined the term volunteer work the same way as TVC does. While talking about volunteer work, the teachers named following characteristics: person's free will, unpaid work, unselfishness, mission and solving the problems which the society faces. ● 8 teachers of civic education out of 10 discussed more or less the topic of volunteering in their lessons. 75% of them find, that this topic should be given more attention.

The results of the study ● Today the main obstacles are: (1) too little time can be devoted to this topic according to the curricula, (2) the lack of materials and information and (3) teacher's small knowledge about the topic. ● The possibilities to practice volunteer work in schools are poor, but teachers believe, that practical work can compensate too small attention given to the topic in lessons. At the same time the practice of volunteer work should not be obligatory to the students.

The results of the study ● 7 teachers said, that voluntary actions have not taken place in their schools. There we can see the problem with understanding – if students organize events or parties in school, it is not considered to be volunteer work. ● 9 teachers said, that volunteer work can provide possibilities to organize the free time of less active students.

The results of the study ● No teachers have had cooperation with organizations, which deal with volunteers. 2/3 of them would like to have such cooperation in the form of meetings, briefings and dissemination of materials. ● 9 teachers would like to receive more information about volunteering in the future. Most preferred are materials, Internet and briefings.