1. Improving Volunteering in Social Care
Grundtvig Partnership Project 2011-2013
London Meeting
6 – 7 September 2012
A case study on recruiting and supporting volunteers – PASYKAF experience
Central Offices: Photinou Pana 12+14, 1045 Nicosia
Tel. +357 22 345 444 Fax. +357 22 346 116 Email: info@pasykaf.org
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2. Objectives
To create 2 New Volunteer Teams for PASYKAF
1.Volunteer Team to support Cancer Patients – Nicosia
• Visit patients and keeping them company at the hospitals
• Offering help in simple tasks like cooking and grocery
shopping, as well a keeping company to patients at home
• Accompanying and/or driving patients to Health centres for
their therapy
• Travelling with patients abroad
• Support at Activity Centres
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3. Objectives
2. Volunteer Team to support PASYKAF and it’s fundraising
activities – Nicosia
• Advanced Services like Legal Advisors, Accounting Assistant,
Graphic Designer
• Supportive Services like donations in memory – volunteers to
collect donations in memory of loved ones at churches
• Events and other fundraising activities like organizing and
coordinating of social, cultural and sporting events, crewing of
counters at fairs, selling tickets, coupons and lottery tickets,
making and selling of various kinds of craftsmanship, helping and
crewing at the organization’s events and fairs.
• Assisting office services including preparation of files,
delivering and placing flyers and other informational material at
the volunteers’ workplace, contacting people and/or companies
over the phone, mailing etc.
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4. Repeating Problems
1. Recruit: Difficulty to attract and recruit new volunteers
(especially volunteers with no cancer experience)
• Sceptical to volunteer in an organization involved with cancer
• Fear of the volunteers of not having the skills or the time to
commit
• No clear policy regarding recruitment of volunteers
2. Retention:
• High volunteer turnover
• No clear roles or feedback
• Volunteer retention based on personal relationships with
district managers and not on a clear policy regarding
retention
• Problems between volunteers and paid personnel
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5. New approach base on best practises
Establishing a Patients Support Group
• Established a clear policy regarding recruitment and retention
procedure for volunteers
• Prepared in advance a training course for volunteers
• Identified possible volunteers and organised 2 open day
events to present key information regarding the role, the
recruitment policy, expectations of the organization etc.
• We also indicated the value we would get from each
volunteer and tried to break down the fear of role by providing
them a clear curriculum of the training course
• Our Nicosia Psychologist was the assigned person
responsible for training, supervising, monitoring and
facilitating communication with volunteers
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6. New approach base on best practises
Patients Support Group – Results
• 45 persons attended the initial open day presentations
• 20 person requested to participate in the group
• 15 selected after private interviews
• 11 successfully completed the training program
• 6 became systematic volunteers and 3 became occasional
• Excellent relationship and cooperation
• Flexibility was shown in order to match availability
• Systematic feedback and support to all volunteers
• Created a lot of awareness and now people enrol in order to
participate at our 2nd volunteers support group
• Gained experience on our selection process which we realise
is one of the areas where we needed to improve more
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7. New approach base on best practises
Establishing a Volunteer Team to support PASYKAF and it’s
fundraising activities Patients Support Group
• Organized a big campaign to attract new volunteers
• Organised 2 open day events to present key information
regarding the role, the recruitment policy, expectations of the
organization etc. We also presented clearly who we are and
how we help and tried to be open and answer to all the fears
and concerns of the volunteers
• Our Nicosia District Manager is the assigned person
responsible for training, supervising, monitoring and
facilitating communication with volunteers
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8. New approach base on best practises
• Ask from the volunteers who were interested to make a
formal application indicating experience, area and role of
interest, available time Organized a big campaign to attract
new volunteers
• Prepared Excel Database with all new volunteers
• Organized Committee with more experienced volunteers to to
act as mentors and organizers
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9. New approach base on best practises
New volunteers group – Results
• 120 persons attended the initial open day presentations
• 74 person requested to participate in the group
• 14 experience and committed volunteers were organized into
a committee
• Good relationship so far
• Monthly formal meetings
• Poor practises include:
• No clear skills development program in place yet
• No repay of expenses
• Not used all volunteers yet
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