VOLT Session: Youth Work Volunteering in Faith-Based Organisations

Youth Work volunteering has taken a knock in recent years with a reduction in both staff and volunteers engaging in this challenging and rewarding work. This impact is felt in faith-based volunteering organisations throughout Northern Ireland.

EANI statistics show 95% of their Youth Work workforce are volunteers with paid part-time and full-time youth work staff (5%) delivering a small percentage.

With such a high dependence on volunteers, it is clear that the sustainability of youth services in Northern Ireland is intrinsically linked to the recruitment and retention of volunteers to ensure continued delivery of services.

However, Evangelical Alliance’s research in 2021 found that a quarter of church leaders perceived a significant decrease in volunteers. Youth Initiatives have noted that members have concerns regarding recruiting and retaining youth work staff within the faith-based sector.

With this in mind, Volunteer Now is partnering with Youth Initiatives and Youth Link to try and address this problem by developing training and toolkits that will promote and support Youth Work Volunteering in Faith-Based organisations.

To this end, to ensure that whatever we create really meets the needs of this volunteering sector and solves the problems they are experiencing, we wish to bring together such groups so that we can hear in their own words what their experiences are with Youth Work volunteering and what they need and want from us.

Youth Work Volunteering in Faith-Based Organisations

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See our Youth Volunteering opportunities here: Youth Volunteering