VOLUNTARY LABOUR CORPS

The Voluntary Labour Corps is a state organization, the key functions of which include:

actions intended to support the system of education through social, occupational, and economic activation of young people,
actions that are supposed to improve vocational qualifications of people or to retrain them,
backing any initiatives intended to counteract unemployment and to nurture youths in the process of work performance, including employment process organization and organization of international co-operation between young people around the world.

The primary objective of VLC is to create adequate conditions for proper social and vocational development of young people, including special actions that are addressed to disfavoured young people who are supported by VLC and such support consists in organization of various forms of going out of poverty, unemployment, and social pathology effects.

Actions taken by VLC are addressed to three groups of young people aged 15-25 years.

The first group is made of young people who are neglected and whose life opportunities are remarkably reduced. People belonging to that category come from environments that are unfit from the social point of view, mostly pathological and sometimes, even from environment that gives grounds to criminal behaviours. They also have problems at school. Every year, such young people (as many as over 32,000) are recruited for over 200 organizational units that are involved in care and nurture activities.

The second group consists of post-grammar school graduates (or senior post-grammar school students), people who have successfully graduated from higher schools - youths, who are educated already and possessing certain vocational qualifications, skills and abilities, yet affected by unemployment problem. For those young people, VLC arranges various job market actions.

The third group is made by post-grammar school students and higher school students who are willing to work in their spare time and they want to do it through VLC acting as an intermediary, gain vocational experience, and at the same time, improve their financial standing. Every year, almost 250,000 young people apply to VLC and over 50% of them are employed - mostly, they take short-term jobs of the seasonal nature.

The tasks described above are carried out to effect by the Central Headquarters of VLC and by 16 Regional Headquarters of VLC subordinated to the central one together with 49 Youth Education and Job Centres, and 9 Education and Nurture Centres. Due to the specific nature of tasks being accomplished, the fundamental units of VLC are divided into two categories:

219 units of the care and nurture nature, including: 9 Education and Nurture Centres, 29 Education and Training Centres, 101 Labour Squads, and 80 Environmental Labour Squads. At a moment, over 33,500 youths belong to those organizations;
units that accomplish tasks for job market - they form the network of almost 430 entities, including: Youth Education and Labour Centres, Mobile Vocational Information Centres, Youth Job Recruitment Offices and subsidiaries thereof, Youth Career Centres, Job Agencies, and Job Clubs.

To various extent, all of the abovementioned organizations are open to anyone - they accomplish tasks for local communities in co-operation and co-action with local governments, employers, associations, and foundations that are active on a particular territory.

Young people, who are classified into the first group, are referred to VLC units by guardians, pedagogic and psychological consultants, social aid centres, emergency aid centres, courts for juveniles, Police, and orphanages. Nevertheless, no person may be admitted, unless he or she wants it. A young person may call for any of the following units: Labour Squads, Environmental Labour Squads, Training and Nurture Centres, and Education and Nurture Centres. The youths, who are the most disadvantaged as far as their familial and financial situation is concerned, are provided with free-of-charge lodging and food at those centres.

The process of becoming educated by means of participation in VLC is one of the ways to acquire general knowledge and to help them develop vocational skills and abilities as a part of the Polish system of education. Any VLC participant makes his or her general knowledge complete respectively to elementary or grammar school syllabus and at the same time, he or she is trained in a particular profession or acquires occupational qualifications at the level of basic vocational school. The process of general education is realized at public schools. On-job-training for a particular profession is conducted by employers out of our institution (for example, craftsmen) or at auxiliary enterprises of VLC. A person is train in selected profession for 2, maybe 3 years depending on the type of syllabus. Any person, who has graduated from VLC, is conferred School Graduation Diploma and after he or she passes successfully the examination of vocational skills and competence, he or she is conferred a vocational title or a certificate of successful training in a particular profession. Both the recruitment and vocational training of all VLC participants are carried out under individual employment contracts to be concluded between an employer and a VLC participant - naturally, under the terms and conditions applicable to juvenile employees. Therefore, VLC participants are paid for both work time and study time. They are provided with social benefits to which they are entitled and time spent by them on training is included into their seniority. The certificate of graduation from a basic vocational school gives its holder a right to continue education, for example, at the level of high school. As far as vocational training is concerned, the scope of VLC offer is very diversified, and it gives young people an opportunity to choose any profession he or she is interested in from the extensive job offer composed of 56 professions.

As far as youth (VLC participants) nurturing activity is concerned, the most important areas of activity are as follows:

preventive actions intended to shape certain social behaviours, including prevention of addictions, prevention of unsocial and degenerative behaviours, and healthcare actions,
education and activation in various spheres of social life (ecologic, civic, intercultural, etc.).

Actions intended to nurture young people (VLC participants) are carried out to effect mainly through organization of educational, cultural, educational, recreational, sports, and tourist events as well as by means of various forms of psychological and specialist aid. As far as practical aspects of nurturing are concerned, a nurturing through work process and for job market is a predominant and key tool. As a matter of fact, work is used as an effective method employed to nurture young people.

Voluntary Labour Corps, as a job market institution, carry out comprehensive activities in the area of job market addressed to young people who are 15-25 years old. As a part of those activities, free-of-charge services are being rendered in the following forms: job intermediation, occupational intermediation, and job related information, active job search workshops, organization of training, and job market programs. Those tasks are being accomplished through a well-coordinated system of job consulting, advising, counselling, and intermediating as well as through vocational training covering the network of outposts: Youth Job Offices, subsidiaries of Youth Job Offices, Job Clubs, Job Agencies, Vocational Training Centres, Mobile Vocational Information Centres, and Youth Career Centres. Those outposts are controlled by Youth Education and Job Centres. Their offer is a response to local needs of youth environment for particular services as far as job market is concerned.

In the year of 2011, at the Youth Job Offices, over 177,000 young job searchers were registered. Indeed, 166,000 workplaces have been successfully acquired. Job fairs and employment exchanges - organized every year, by all Centres for Education and Work with Youths on the entire territory of Poland and by units subordinated to those centres.

The scope of activities carried out by the Mobile Vocational Information Centres [MVIC] and by Youth Career Centres covers job related information and job related consultancy as well as various aspects of entrepreneurship. Mobile Vocational Information Centres possess marked microbuses equipped appropriately with methodological and hardware tools used by job consultants whose task is to approach small-size localities. The forms of work performed by MVIC job consultants are as follows: group meetings and job related information workshops as well as provision of individual pieces of information and occupation related advices.

Youth Career Centres [YCC] are stationary units. The important aspect of YCC's activity is a module of entrepreneurship, as a part of which, job consultants work on shaping entrepreneurial attitudes of young people through supporting self-employment concepts organizationally and by means of consulting. The network of YCC is well developed - mainly with the use of funds coming from the European Social Fund, as a part of Polish Nationwide Project entitled The Voluntary Labour Corps as a Provider of Job Market Services. A target is to form 150 new units.

The scope of VLC includes also refund of wages payable to juvenile employees with the use of funds provided by the Labour Fund. Since 1st September 2004, VLC is the only one job market institution that accepts applications for conclusion of refund agreements. Regional Headquarters and Centres for Education and Work with Youths are the units of VLC that are in charge of that task. The purpose of those actions is to stimulate demand in local job markets for juvenile employees which helps youths acquire vocational qualifications and increases their opportunity to find a permanent job.

Extensive outlook as far as accomplishment of statutory tasks is concerned has provided VLC with an opportunity to utilize structural funds of the European Union, in particular, funds coming from the European Social Fund [ESF]. In reaction to actual needs of youths exposed to the problem of marginalization and social exclusion, in the year of 2004, Voluntary Labour Camps - as the one of the first Polish institutions - proceeded to implement projects, that are co-financed with ESF, and those projects were continued in the next year and will be continued in the upcoming years as well. Having taken an opportunity to apply for subsidies made of EU funds, throughout the past years, VLC have successfully completed 17 nationwide projects.

All those projects are addressed to youths exposed to the problem of marginalization or to social exclusion. Involvement of young people in those projects escalates their social and occupational activation, inter alia, through acquisition of new vocational qualifications, elimination of educational deficiencies, development of IT utilization skills, increase of motivation to educate oneself and to search for a job, self-esteem increase, and stronger sense of duty and liability for tasks being accomplished.

Funds from ESF constitute a significant source of support for actions being taken by VLC which translates to increase in professionalism of educational services being rendered and to increase in the number of young people who are provided with real assistance, when they are faced with a necessity to solve their existential and day-to-day problems. VLC are implementing the largest of ESF projects, if we take the extent and the number of beneficiary groups into account. The outcome of projects proves that VLC is a highly experienced project initiator and a perfect organizer who knows how to achieve goals in co-operation with others and is highly reactive to challenges contained in operating programs referred to the areas of employment, social integration, and continuous education. All of the past ESF projects having been completed by VLC have been truly appreciated and highly valued by local environments, in particular, by youths participating in those projects.

The Voluntary Labour Corps carry out operations, the scope of which is really extensive, and those operations are focused mainly on international youth exchange programs which are treated as a very important educational and nurture factor. The international youth exchange, initiated by the Voluntary Labour Camps, is organized with the use of European funds and a special attention is paid to the 'Youths in Action' Program and to the Polish - German Youth Co-operation [PGYC]. As a part of the 'Youths in Action' Program, in 2011, as many as 47 projects were completed successfully, whereas as a part of PGYC, 68 projects were successfully brought to the end. Moreover, in the year of 2011, VLC completed successfully projects as a part of the other European international youth exchange programs (for example, Leonardo da Vinci Project) or financed with VLC's own funds. VLC units develop relations with foreign institutions continuously and regularly and those relations are supposed to initiate co-operation with new organizations or to expand the existent forms of co-operation with its present partners. Nevertheless, direct meetings - the most usual forms of which are just preparatory visits, study visits, training sessions for volunteers, experience sharing forum, training seminars, etc. - have turned out to be the most effective tool. Furthermore, every year, the representatives of the Central Headquarters of the Voluntary Labour Corps as well as units subordinated thereto attend numerous international conferences and meetings dedicated to problems related to youth education and nurturing in Poland and abroad.

The Voluntary Labour Corps is a modern institution that takes full advantage of the most advanced solutions and methods employed in the process of working with youths. That institution reacts quickly and efficiently to changing conditions and to social needs of youths as well as to all current trends and requirements of job market. As a matter of fact, the Voluntary Labour Corps have a true reason to be perceived as a national leader as far as occupational and social activation of the young generation is concerned.