Core Competencies for Volunteer Programs

Competencies can be defined as underlying characteristics of people or a service kind that indicates way of thinking that generalize situations for a long period of time. In terms of volunteer services, the volunteer programs are known to come with various core competencies to make the project successful.

Volunteer program characteristics or core competencies include the following:

Recruitment & development of participants

The main or first core competency is the recruitment of participants. As a part of various programs, it is essential to recruit healthy volunteers who can go through brain scanning and other investigations to check out how efficient they are. The requirements involve steps that can verify internal desire and motivation of the participant.

As far as assessment is concerned, a comprehensive assessment program is there to analyze strengths, challenges, cognitive functioning, adaptive behavior , abstract reasoning and independent living skills of participants.

Volunteer leveraging

It is essential to identify the advantages of volunteer opportunities and thus volunteer leveraging is another core competency. Factors that are considered to analyze the success of programs include maximizing the impact of the project, volunteer role, leadership curriculum, organization’s mission and training of individuals.

Community engagement & strengthening

Another competent factor is to consider community engagement and strengthening. There are various things which are given priority to understand this competency. Different types of programs are meant to have volunteers trained as per the goals and requirements of the programs.In order to make the programs successful, the individuals are trained in the way to understand different aspects of community if one have selected the community development program. They are trained to understand the problems, requirements, culture, lifestyle, education, earning and much more. Adding to it, they are also taught with the ways to strengthen the community in terms of requirements like sanitation, permanent shelter, electricity, reliable roads and much more.

Performance measurement

Next to community engagement is the performance measurement. It is important to measure the results and efficiency of programs, thus volunteering services focus on efforts towards managing results to maximize benefits and minimize negative consequence for services or programs. Performance measurements helps elected participants in accessing what programs have achieved with the provided funds. Adding to it, it also assists in finding ways to increase the ability of under-performers or performers to get the job done in specific resources they have.

Other than these, there are various other core competencies which are considered by professional volunteering services to make complex volunteer programs like community development, learn abroad, environment & wildlife and other projects successful.