Education through Volunteering: Involvement in a Community Project

Currently, volunteering represents an important mean of acquiring skills and competencies required by the ever fluctuating demands of the labor market. Although the number of volunteers enrolled in various programs has substantially increased in Romania in the latter years, only a small fraction of these come from the rural areas. At the same time, statistics indicate that a significant percentage of adults from the countryside is represented by unskilled workforce, for whom only two options apply: seasonal agricultural work and unqualified labor in construction. The focus of this study is to propose a program in which people from disadvantage areas can build a house themselves, through volunteer involvement for the less fortunate members of their community, and gain in the process the knowledge and skills that will help them in the search for a job. The project aims at involving adults from rural zones, in the construction of new dwellings for families without shelter. Thus, 3 major aspects were targeted through this eight week project: restoring the sentiment of belonging to a community; the implementation of an ecological construction, easy to build, sustainable and thermally efficient and re-education of the volunteers involved by gaining new skills and competences as well as a professional attestation.