On February 19th 2025, CONNECT hosted the piloting activity for the project “E-volunteering – building an online volunteering ecosystem” in its office in Brussels. This initiative, in collaboration with our partners Libero, Backslash, Mladi Zmaji, MoveIt, and Curiosité de Information, brought together youth workers and representatives of international youth organizations to explore innovative approaches to e-volunteering.

Divided into two parts, the workshop focused on key topics: assessing the capacities of international youth organizations in managing e-volunteers and understanding how to effectively motivate and manage volunteers online. 
The first part included a workshop where the participants, after being introduced to e-volunteering benefits and challenges, engaged in hands-on tasks designed to simulate real-world management scenarios: everyday coordination, long-term volunteer recruitment and retention, and short-term project coordination.
The second part constitutes the solution CONNECT advances to propel organizations into the digital era: the DigitalYOu platform, an innovative toolset that enables users to organize and attend virtual events, connect with other organizations through virtual fairs, and manage e-volunteering opportunities within dedicated virtual spaces.
Eventually, attendees expressed strong interest in the e-volunteering function in the DigitalYOu platform, considering integrating it into their day-to-day practices.

The event represents a pivotal moment in converting youth workers’ perspectives into tangible policy proposals that will drive legislative change at national and European levels. CONNECT International will further this effort by participating in a conference in Strasbourg at the end of May, where we will discuss the standardization and guidelines for e-volunteering practices.

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The project is co-funded by the European Union.