One way to motivate young people to (continue) volunteering and validate their efforts to contribute to the community is to reward their volunteering engagement with additional points when applying for scholarships funded from public sources (e.g. scholarships funded and administrated by municipalities).

Of course, to preserve one of the basic principles of volunteering, the volunteering engagement should be – as the expression itself suggests – voluntarily chosen, and not the condition youth have to fulfill to be eligible candidates for the scholarship. Also, as with other categories of non-academic criteria that can bring additional points (such as different social and economic criteria), it is important that volunteering is described, transparently and with no ambiguities, in documents regulating the local scholarships criteria and the awarding process.

Volunteer centre Istria analysed the documents of all municipalities in the Region of Istria (total of 41, the Region (county), 10 towns and 31 smaller units), resulting in a material that will serve as the starting point of workshop with young people.

Workshop participants will draft local scholarships policy recommendations to municipal decision makers. News about the workshop coming soon!

Analysis results (Croatian)