The evaluation of young people's motives age 18-30 to volunteer at events and their future ability to adapt this experience in the 'real life'.

Abstract

Usually young people between 18 to 30 years old are either getting ready to enter the labour market or they already are in it. In order to enter or remain in the market, they need to have relevant exposure, contacts, experience and resources that could benefit their employability and volunteering experience may help them to gain it. As this research uncovers, the total of 87% of respondents seems to agree with this statement. The main goal of the current study was to identify what motivates and discourages young people age 18-30 to get involved in volunteering activities at events and to analyze the individuals' perception on whether having volunteering experience helps them build their future careers. For this research the quantitative research methodology was selected and the online survey method was employed. Participants were selected randomly and also the principle of snowball was used. Overall, 117 questionnaires were completed that seemed enough for this research. The participants were between 18 to 30 years old who either did or did not volunteer at least once in their lives. The results of the study are highly linked to the literature and concepts discussed in chapter 2 and the consistency between results and theory is shown is Chapter 4. The research project concludes with the summary of the study and relevant recommendations for the further research. Key words: volunteering, age, employability, experience, motives, barriers, career.