Volunteering Seen from a Pedagogical Perspective

Volunteering as an activity fulfils the general task of promoting social integration and cohesion at community scale (local, territorial, national, and European). It takes place via nonformal activities, with numerous openings towards the informal. From the perspective of lifelong learning, volunteering explores optimally, in specific various and diversified situations, the experience of those involved as participants and beneficiaries. In the field of education volunteering evolves within the structure of postmodern (contemporary) educational systems. The volunteers – pupils and students, as well as teachers – develop their activities based on contractual and consensual agreements with various governmental and nongovernmental organisations, local community representatives, professioal associations, parents’ assossiations etc. When cultivated as a priority, social competence concerns individual and collective responsibility, which is civically assumed and validated and may be perfected under conditions of moral solidarity and socio-affective empathy