(ANS - Madrid) - On 31 January, the Feast of St. John Bosco, the Confederation of Don Bosco Youth Centres in Spain presented a project called RECONOCE (Recognize). It is an initiative that draws attention - as Don Bosco did in his time – to the working conditions of young people.

Nowadays we deplore the difficulty young people experience in finding access to proper work. The youth unemployment rate is over 50% in Spain. Don Bosco would surely take this problem seriously and do all in his power to change the situation. The Don Bosco Confederation is also concerned about this problem, and the first step it has taken is to highlight how the work done by its young volunteers, in addition to improving the lives of other young people, enables them to acquire a set of skills that improve their chances of employment.

In Madrid on 31 January they presented the results of a study on the value of youth volunteering before employment and its effect on skills and employment potential. The results show that volunteering improves considerably the chances of finding a job.

The research was conducted by the Confederation of Don Bosco Youth Centres, the Didania Federation and the ASDE Scouts of Spain. It was carried out by Voluntariado y Estrategia, a specialist consultancy, as part of the RECONOCE project which is aimed at promoting the volunteer experience in youth and leisure clubs in order to improve the employment potential of young people.

The RECONOCE network has the support of the Institute for Youth of Spain (Injuve), a body that has expressed interest in recognizing the work of volunteers in the context of non-formal education, and the Council of Youth Spain.

For more information the full study, in Spanish, in PDF format, can be downloaded.

Published 06/02/2015