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It has been a long time since we have experienced such an intensely changing reality as in the years just passed. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down the entire planet, the war in Ukraine is showing a new face of emigration and mutual solidarity... and these are only the most spectacular events. Each of us has a personal reference to global, local and individual phenomena.

The world is changing and so we are changing, stepping out of our comfort zone. We are rapidly learning a new present, getting to know new communication tools and - against total closure - opening up to new challenges and relationships.

The aim of the joint work of four institutions - UCLM from Cuenca, Spain, LUMSA University from Rome, Italy, SYNTESIS from Nicosia, Cyprus, and the Aktywni XXI Foundation from Jelenia Góra, Poland, participating in the Adult Inclusive Design project within the Erasmus+ programme - was to prepare methodical tools for a group of senior volunteers who are ready to devote their time, knowledge and energy to work with and become mentors to groups of people in need of support.

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Volunteering

According to the encyclopaedia, volunteering is unpaid, conscious and voluntary work for the benefit of other people, society or organisations (Encyklopedia Popularna PWN, 2020). Volunteers are people who voluntarily and consciously engage in unpaid work for the benefit of individuals, non-governmental organisations and various institutions operating in different social areas.

They perform these activities unpaid, often after working or studying hours, or - as in the case of seniors - in their time free from family responsibilities. Despite the lack of material remuneration, their activities are not entirely disinterested. In return, they receive numerous intangible benefits, such as a sense of meaning in life, satisfaction, self-fulfilment, being appreciated and many others.

What most often motivates volunteers is:

• the desire to do something good, useful,
• making new friends and acquaintances,
• gaining knowledge, experience and new skills,
• the opportunity to share knowledge and experience,
• being needed,
• returning the kindness they once received from someone;
• religious reasons.

A special group of volunteers can be senior citizens, who have a considerable amount of free time and what is most valuable - knowledge and experience. In retirement, they often feel full of possibilities that do not find an outlet in their professional work because they are no longer doing it. Yet, they still want to use them with the satisfaction of a duty well done to society. Often they want to join a new stream of life, quite different from the one they led while busy working and caring for family members.

They open themselves up to new challenges that could give a fuller course to their existence, and so they volunteer to help people in need of support. As a result, they may be confronted with issues that are completely alien to them, such as differences within social identities in terms of race, class, gender, age or ability. This situation can be a barrier to establishing relationships and achieving wellbeing, and can make the senior person feel helpless. This is why it is important that volunteers are guided by a professional who can lead them through the meanderings of a new life activity.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the vulnerability of older people and the need for community support. Volunteering increases the integration of seniors into the community, and even for those in late adulthood with multiple illnesses, participation in volunteering appears to improve their health. Giving help and gratitude are particularly powerful practices because they can help nurture positive behaviour.

If we can share selflessly with another person, it means we are rich in what we give - love, understanding, respect, support and time. Many social activists say that by giving, you gain even more and this gives meaning to their work.

Mentoring

Many definitions of mentoring can be found in the literature, but the one proposed by Sebastian Karwal (2007) is very close to the idea of Adult Inclusive Design. According to him, it is a partnership between a master and a student (a professor and a student, a supervisor and an employee, etc.) focused on discovering and developing the student's potential. Through regular discussions with the master, the student acquires new knowledge, learns about himself/herself, develops his/her professional self-awareness and is not afraid to follow his/her chosen path of self-realisation. There is no question of age, education or any other distance. The person who receives knowledge and experience from the mentor supports himself/herself and wants to learn as much as possible for his/her own benefit. On the other hand, a mentor is someone who also shares his/her professional and social experience voluntarily, doing so for the benefit of his/her mentees.

Mentoring is not about creating artificial situations in which abstract knowledge is imparted ex cathedra. On the contrary, the mentor's task is to support the mentee in concrete, authentic tasks.

This can be done in several ways:

• Accompaniment: the mentor assists the mentee, contributes to the tasks at hand. Support and guidance is continuous.
• Preparation ('seeding'): the mentor prepares the mentee for future difficulties before the mentee himself/herself is able to anticipate them.
• Catalysing: the mentor uses a setback or crisis that has already happened to make the mentee reflect and develop new ways of doing things.
• Demonstrating: the mentor is a role model.

The mentor's personality, his or her approach to the mentee, his/her work ethic, his/her openness and acceptance of differences and his/her availability are very important in the mentor's work. This traditional and at the same time modern form of work between a student and a teacher is a very good opportunity for joint reflections and considerations that benefit the mentees in their voluntary work.

Potential senior mentors may have broad knowledge of helping, but some will want to supplement this with examples of how to use this in very specific settings. Working with people with disabilities, migrants, seniors or other disadvantaged groups requires in-depth knowledge of their backgrounds and skills. It is important for the volunteer to follow the mentee, guiding them by the hand into a new reality, while accepting their rich life experience, which may not always be relevant to their current situation.

Methodological handbook

Bearing all this in mind, all four partner countries in AID created the first intellectual output which is methodological handbook together with a package of workshop plans for volunteers. It is a tool valuable for a wide audience, as it can be used by both volunteer candidates and experienced trainers working with people at risk of social exclusion. It contains sample plans for use in workshops on: interpersonal, communication and motivational skills, working with problem clients or strengthening self-esteem. Innovative methods of conducting workshops are also presented.

The guide is a useful resource for educators working with social work institutions and NGOs working to improve the social, financial and psychological status of people at risk of exclusion.

It is available for a free download both in English and in Polish on: https://aktywni21.org.pl/pliki-do-pobrania/.

We believe that direct contact with another person builds the best relationships, therefore the workshop plans were originally prepared for face-to-face interaction. However, as this publication was written during the Covid-19 pandemic, they are easy to adapt to the conditions when using digital technologies is a must.

The fact that the authors from each country have different knowledge and experience has resulted in a rich toolkit with diversity in mind, which we believe is an added advantage of the publication. The authors wish that this 'guide to volunteering' finds the widest possible audience and becomes a source of inspiration and valuable advice, as well as the start of other valuable and reliable publications.

Bibliography

Belle Rose Ragins, Kathy E. Kram, The Handbook of Mentoring at Work: Theory, Research and Practice, LosAngeles: Sage Publications, 2007

Bob Aubrey, Cohen Aubrey Timeless Skills and Vanguard Strategies for Learning Organizations, Jossey Bass, 1995

Rafał Szrajnert, Mentoring, https://www.rafalszrajnert.pl/mentoring/, 01.06.2021

Sebastian Karwala, Model mentoringu we współczesnej szkole wyższej, WSB-NLU, 2007.

Wolontariat in: Encyklopedia Popularna PWN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN 2020.

Zofia Szarota. (2010), Starzenie się i starość w wymiarze instytucjonalnego wsparcia, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UP, Kraków.

Author: Danuta Sadownik – Fundacja „Aktywni XXI”