Thank you.
Hello. I will address everybody in English, and can answer questions in both languages.
All of our documentation is available in English and in French.
To begin with, I just want to thank you for considering the very important topic of how our experience in the community helps build our capacity in general. Volunteer Canada has been doing a considerable amount of work on both youth engagement and skills-based volunteering. I thought I would give an overview of both of those areas and share with you some of our insights.
In the past, we've looked at skills-based volunteering as a way for someone with professional experience or a specialty in education to share that experience and skill with an organization. More and more, though, we're looking at skills-based volunteering as a way of transferring skills. It could be someone with some skills and experience having the ability to share that with a non-profit organization or a community, but it could also be someone who wants to develop those skills. As well, it could be somebody who can coach somebody else who wants to develop those skills. When you think about the different combinations of skills-based volunteering, we're really talking about transferring skills at the same time as building the capacity of organizations and communities.
One of the things that we are very careful about in terms of skills-based volunteering—and the colleague before was talking about some of the interviews that had been taking place with youth who were looking to volunteer as a way of gaining experience—is to promote and facilitate the transfer of skills without exploiting people. As we all know, youth and people in work transitions are very concerned about gaining experience. At the same time, we need to be careful not to undermine the paid workforce and not to take advantage of that desire to gain experience.
Youth aged 15 to 24 have the highest volunteer rate in the country. Sixty-six per cent of youth aged 15 to 19 volunteer, and there is a myth that people volunteer in that age group because of mandatory community service programs in high school or community service learning in universities. Actually, 80% of youth are volunteering because they choose to on their own. There may be those other benefits.
When we look at generations of volunteers, we see that the incoming generations are much more goal-oriented, value higher education, have a sense of mobility, are at ease with technology, are quite autonomous, and have multiple roles in communities. How this plays into our choices of volunteering means that we're volunteering for many reasons. We're very lucky here that Statistics Canada, in the general social survey, tracks volunteering and gives us insight into how people volunteer at different stages and ages. We know that people look for volunteering because they want to help in the community. That's the top reason. When we look at the second reason people volunteer, that's when we start to see the differences between the generations and between the different age groups. For example, it is true that many younger volunteers are looking at volunteering as a way of gaining experience and developing skills, while older adults may look at volunteering as a way to stay connected and prevent social isolation. We all have personal goals. In the past, I think we believed that to volunteer, you needed to be altruistic and only want to help community.
What we learned over time is that we all benefit from volunteering. There is always something to gain, so having a reciprocal relationship means that we could attend to our own personal goals and growth at the same time as helping community. Someone might be interested in a population that they care very much about. Perhaps it is older adults. Perhaps they're interested in a locality and investing in their neighbourhood. Perhaps it has to do with a skill or an opportunity. There are many lenses through which people look for volunteering.
On the idea of looking at volunteering and experience gained as a way of bridging to employment, one of the things that we have learned is that the language we use when we describe a volunteer opportunity doesn't always lend itself to people seeing those skills as transferable, nor does it lend itself to employers seeing those skills and competencies as transferable.
What we're doing is training within non-profit organizations on different ways of describing opportunities. I'll give you an example. If I tell you that I have volunteered to help run a bake sale, you might think of cooking, baking, and recipes. But if I told you that I purchased supplies, I did promotion, I trained part-time shift workers to staff the bake sale over a three-day period, I dealt with cash, etc., then you may see some of those skills as transferable. One of the things that I passed around to members of the committee is some position descriptions that are written in that fashion. First, you'll see that there's a title which is trying to be descriptive and also something that you could see linking to employment. There's the goal, there are skills required, but there's also skills developed. The terms that we're using come from the National Occupational Classification system, so that one could easily transport and see transferring those skills to employment. Again, if we're talking about leadership, motivating others, logistical arrangements, those are things we could relate to as transferable skills for employment, and they absolutely come from many volunteer experiences.
This tool that I've passed around really illuminates the way in which we can make that bridge. The other thing is to talk about transferable skills that many times come from life experiences. If somebody is, for example, stamp collecting as a hobby, they may not realize that this requires organizational skills, an interest in geography, and perhaps some visual aesthetic in terms of display. There are all kinds of skills that come from many things we do in life.
We'll also see some cards that I've passed around. It's something that we're doing in the non-profit sector. The idea there is looking at how someone presents themself. If someone comes and says they're a gardener, you might think the most obvious thing is to ask them to tend the garden in the nursing home, but what if they want to expand their skills? You see that they like to be outdoors. Perhaps they know nature well and they can take a group of youth on a nature hike.
In closing, what I want to say is that volunteering is absolutely a vehicle for developing skills, for sharing skills, and for building capacities of individuals, organizations, and communities. The sensitivity has to be with the organization, so that they can make those experiences positive and not exploit or take advantage of people looking for opportunities. At the same time, they're making sure that when people come to volunteer, there is a passion and an interest in what the organization does in addition to the personal goals of developing skills, so that we have that mutual, reciprocal relationship.