ESN Italy & Employability

This year, ESN Italy improved a programme started one year ago thanks to a dedicated team: ESN & Employability. In addition to providing training sessions strictly related to the activities that are daily carried out by our volunteers, ESN Italy, in the figure of the Project Manager, and the Skills and Employability task force organised sessions aimed at improving the transversal skills of the volunteers themselves, with the aim of transferring knowledge that can also be exploited in the professional field. External professionals were involved in order to offer different experiences and points of view on topics such as team building, leadership, organisational management, communication and planning.
The Skills and Employability team worked on different levels in order to better disseminate knowledge on the topics depending on the target audience and the level of detail required.
For this reason, there were two more specific main events, which were also open to volunteers coming from other NGOs, and further moments dedicated to different volunteer communities or open to students and local community. The further moments addressing the single communities of volunteers were mainly dedicated to specific topics and skills, like team and time management, long-term planning, skills we can acquire by volunteering in ESN or having an experience abroad. Some of them were also delivered on the occasion of the online Job Weeks organised in collaboration with Campus Orienta (organisation operating in the field of personal and professional development).

The two main events were:
1. “How to Manage your Projects: make them inclusive and sustainable”: The idea behind the initiative was to provide an overview of project management, through the direct testimony of those who work in the fields of environmental sustainability and social inclusion (e.g. urban regeneration projects, but also entrepreneurship initiatives such as green start-ups). The main objective was to highlight the link between what we do in our own small way, at a voluntary level, and what we can achieve - on a larger scale - in "real life". For this reason, we not only offered a technical overview of project design by including testimonials such as a Project Manager for culture and social innovation, an ESC volunteer from Legambiente (the leading environmental voluntary organisation in our Country), and a manager of the project and monitoring operational unit of the Youth of the Italian Red Cross, but we also demonstrated how long-term planning for social inclusion and sustainability can also be applied to realities and businesses by inviting the CEO of a green start-up.The event was open to volunteers of Youth of the Italian Red Cross and Legambiente as well and it also aimed to inspire participants on future career development.
2. "Social Impact: how to make your projects SMART and really leave a mark": on the occasion of the Autumn edition of SIDs (Social Impact Days), there was the second act of the training on project management. On this occasion, we wanted volunteers to realise the impact their activities have on society and different target groups. We therefore started by explaining the SDGs, making practical examples to provide participants with the basic tools to understand how to put them into practice. We then explained what setting SMART goals means and how to design with actions whose effects are measurable. This led to the concept of social impact and methods of measurement. We analysed case studies presented by the same project manager involved in the previous meeting and by a volunteer of Youth of the Italian Red Cross. So we also understood how to set indirect objectives, which can be implemented by the communities or actors who benefit from the direct impact of our project/initiative. At the end of the activity there was a focus on the importance of these activities also in relation with future career development opportunities, since they allow volunteers to have access to organisations and realities operating in the field.
The initiative ESN & Employability was further developped by social media campaigns with testimonials promoting mobility and volunteering as occasions for personal and professional development and by sharing with our local sections and volunteers opportunities such as career days and job fairs in which they could join both as participants and as testimonials.