Caixa Geral de Depósitos is firmly committed to sustainable development and currently boasts the most comprehensive and structured sustainability programme in Portugal’s finance sector. CGD’s commitment to the main social challenges in Portugal is clear in its incentives towards areas such as access to financial products and services, development of microfinance products, promoting social entrepreneurship and third sector engagement.
In its recognition that community involvement (both internal and external) is one of the pillars of its sustainable trajectory, CGD’s commitment to the community is based on an innovative and comprehensive form of social intervention, carried out in three strategic fields: Social Innovation, Culture and Education, Financial Literacy.
CGD has been developing volunteering initiatives for a long time, carrying these projects out with a level of innovation that allows them to be regarded as references since 2006 and the Young VolunTeam Programme, created in 2012, is another successful project promoting volunteering amongst young people.
Based on data provided by studies carried out by the European Commission, Portugal has still to reach the European Union’s average of young people volunteering. This gap sets new goals for CGD’s commitment regarding new and innovative projects in the field of corporate social responsibility. The subject has to be promoted in schools, young people need to be mobilized and official entities must recognize the contribution that volunteering activities have in the development of essential values and skills related to social inclusion, education, employment, entrepreneurship and citizenship and to value a culture of volunteering amongst young people,thuscreating an incentive, through volunteering, for youth to develop the recognition of traits such as mobility, curiosity, openness and entrepreneurship as essential for their own professional future and for the overall competitiveness of our country.
Young VolunTeam is reaching its goals by relying on an innovative and dynamic approach that involves young people (aged 15 to 18) and transfers to them the responsibility for the project’s success. They are leading the project’s initiatives in their schools and in their communities, and CGD is providing them with training, facilitation and guidance, lasting throughout the school year.
The programme activities for the group of young students in each school include: receiving training about volunteering, social entrepreneurship and project management, training sessions that the participating students develop for younger students and building volunteer and social entrepreneurship projects in school that meet the overall goals. At the end of the school year, the students send their reports regarding all the actions they have developed, and those considered to be the five most valuable projects, by a jury composed of the project’s partners, are publicly recognized and strongly promoted as examples to be admired and followed.
In these last two years, the programme reached 115 schools and their communities, directly engaging 1.180 students who mobilized over 60.000 of their colleagues and teachers, school workers and communities to participate in 280 volunteer projects. These students also visited other schools to train 3.900 younger students and develop 194 volunteer projects with them. In total, 712 volunteering traineeship sessions took place. These actions benefited 343 external entities, from NGOs, to social institutions, hospitals, and kindergartens, amongst many others.
Since the launch of the pilot, some improvements have been made, related to extending the limitation of the students who represent each participating school, in order to allow more students to become directly involved and recognized at the end of the year. During the upcoming school year (2014-2015), the programme will also include project proposals and content that will introduce the subject of social entrepreneurship to the schools .
The other pillar of the programme’s success is built around partnerships. Therefore, CGD gathered the most prestigious and knowledgeable partners to take this endeavor forward. Counting on the experience of Sair da Casca as a sustainability consultancy that helped to design the project and leads its implementation, and on the field expertise of ENTRAJUDA, with a remarkable track record in the promotion of volunteering in Portugal. All of the organizing partners developed full research in order to develop the programme’s contents and dynamics, based on a methodology created by ENTRAJUDA. The programme has also the support of the Youth in Action platform, through their Portuguese representation, and of the General Direction of Education of the Ministry of Science and Education which shows the interest and commitment from the Portuguese Government for great pride and deeper belief in the goals CGD has set for Young VolunTeam.
CGD also encourages its employees to take part in Young VolunTeam. Each participating volunteer chooses one of the enrolled schools and supports the student’s work throughout the year, together with the programme’s team, helping the schools to develop their projects and contact external institutions whenever needed.
The overall results of the Young VolunTeam programme are very satisfactory. Schools (students, teachers, school direction boards) recognize the value of the programme’s training of the youngsters, and participating schools have seen a visible improvement in both their communities and the students themselves. . The schools begin the year with a training session and receive daily support from the programme teams.
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