European Year for Volunteering is a year-long campaign to celebrate the work of existing volunteers, address the challenges they face and encourage more people to get involved.

Volunteering benefits everybody and brings communities closer together. For volunteers, it's a way to give something back to society and pick up new skills. It takes many forms, like helping out at a sports club, school, hospital or charity. Today, about 20% of Europeans give up their time to volunteer.

The European Year of Volunteering aims to encourage more people to get involved by:
• making it easier to volunteer
• rewarding volunteers, for example by formally recognising the skills they acquire in the course of their work
• improving the quality of volunteering by providing training and matching volunteers to suitable vacancies
• raising awareness of the value of volunteering.