Encourage, Involve, Engage: young volunteers for outdoor sport events; outdoor sport events for young volunteers

The aim of the „ENcourage, Involve, Engage: young volunteers for outdoor sport events; outdoor sport events for young volunteers” project is to foster cooperation among sport clubs with special focus on young volunteers and address challenges related to volunteer engagement. The project’s aspirations are in harmony with the European priorities for sport volunteering: encouraging young people’s volunteering in sport, developing exchange of information and best practice on volunteering in sport. It also contributes to the goals of educating participants via sport and sport volunteering activities. Our project addresses the challenges that non-profit sport organizations face when it comes to volunteer recruitment, inclusion and retention, especially in the context of outdoor sport events. With this project we wanted to highlight the special features volunteering in outdoor sport events have, the challenges raised by them and we intended to give answers to these challenges by offering exchange of good practices between the involved sport organizations in a learning-by- doing way. We aimed to achieve these goals primarily through mobilities and non-formal learning around and at these events. Our target group was volunteers at (and around) these sport events with special focus on young volunteers (aged 16-25) as we believe their involvement is the key to the future of sport volunteering. The project consortium consisted of 4 sport clubs from four countries (HU, AT, SK, Cz), with recognized expertise and experience in organizing sport events and including young volunteers.We had altogether 6 meetings. 1 workshop with regional stakeholders and international team (26 visitors). 1 Final conference (with Mayors, representatives of Forestry, politicians, Bike Federation Representatives, MTB club leaders in Hungary and abroad, volunteers in sport (64 participants).All the meetings were attended altogether by 36 people out of which 27 were under 30 years old. 4 meetings were conjoined with visiting, observing and doing voluntary work at the MTB race organized by the host. THe visiting volunteers helped at translation, food stations, handing out leaflets, mantling and dismantling the start and finish area, signing tracks, being track marshalls and all other race organization tasks.We had 4 national surveys and 1 comparative survey. Our youngsters prepared 12 photo reports on the visits and altogether 16 videos. THe consequences and recommendations to other organizations in outdoor sport for volunteering were collected in our handbook: Guidelines of volunteering, which is available in English, HUngarian, German, Slovakian and Czech. Visit our website for more information on www.mtb4eu.net.