Awero team
Open Badges helping to ‘make sense’ of volunteer’s learning
4 des., 15:10
For the thousands of young people who take part in the European Solidarity Corps (ESC) programme every year, their volunteering experience can often be a life-changing experience. But turning that into a coherent story of learning, can often be a challenge.
“At the end of a 12-month volunteering period, it’s not easy to remember what you’ve learned. Even with good mentorship, people struggle to find the right words,” Laimonas Ragauskas from Awero reflects.
The ESC programme sees young people spend up to twelve months in another country, learning new skills through solidarity-driven projects. At the end of each experience, participants are invited to complete their Youthpass certificate - the official EU recognition tool for non-formal learning - but sometimes they face a blank page.
“Youthpass asks you to describe what you learned,” explains Laimonas. “But it’s hard to recall everything and put it into words”
This was the problem Laimonas and the team at Awero, with the support of the Lithuanian National Agency, set out to solve: to make learning visible and memorable, as it happens, not just at the end.
Practical, purposeful and powerful
The ESC badge system uses Open Badges, a digital tool to recognise learning. Each badge represents a learning achievement tied to the eight key competences for lifelong learning, including things like multilingualism and cultural awareness. “It’s a digital micro-certificate,” said Laimonas. “Each one is linked to small, practical missions that volunteers can do in their daily life.”
Examples range from navigating public transport in a local language to running a workshop on your home culture. “The badges encourage volunteers to take initiative, to go out, explore, and reflect.”
Each badge has three levels: explorer, achiever, and master, guiding volunteers through different stages of competence development, plus a flexible navigator badge which allows them to complete custom activities that might not fit into a strict structure. “Volunteers’ contexts are so different,” Laimonas explains. “The Navigator badge lets them decide what makes sense for their situation.”
A ‘memory container’ that unlocks ‘deeper reflection’
Giulia Degortes Caivano from Associazione Interculturale NUR in Sardinia is one of the ESC mentors who have been testing the badge system with their volunteers.
“At first, badges weren’t what they cared about,” she admitted. “But halfway through, they started to see the value, especially when we connected it to Youthpass”.
Giulia encouraged her volunteers to choose just a few competences. “Pick a couple that speak to your project and go deeper. That gave them a clear path.”
Each badge includes a description of the volunteer’s learning as well as a space for evidence to be submitted. That evidence can come in the form of photos, videos or short written reflections, something Laimonas believes can build a personalised story of learning.
“The badge becomes a memory container,” he said. “You can look back and see a collection of snapshots; what you did, what you learned, and what it meant to you.”
For Giulia and her volunteers, that story provides a valuable tool to take learning to a more significant level. “It’s a shortcut to deeper reflection,” she says.
ESC badges in practice
Danijela Ranđelović is one of Giulia’s volunteers. She came to Sardinia from Novi Sad in Serbia for a 8 month volunteering placement and was one of the first to road test the badges.
For Danijela, earning badges helped her make sense of the experience. “The badges helped me reflect on every part of my journey and better understand its value,” she said. “All the steps, requirements, and acquired skills were clearly explained.”
Throughout her experience, Danijela earned 14 badges, creating her own learning path to suit the activities she was involved in. That flexibility is something Laimonas says he and the team were conscious of when they designed the system.
“It's a lesson we learned from the National Volunteering Programme in Lithuania, where the badges have been used for around ten years,” he explains. “We cannot predefine all missions for volunteers, because placements can be so different. [So we designed the system to mean] there’s always a choice.”
Enhancing volunteer support
As someone working with volunteers, Giulia also found the badges supported her in her role in unlocking learning. “Our check-ins became more focused,” she reflects. “Instead of just asking ‘How are you?’ we’d ask, ‘What badges did you work on?’ It made learning part of the conversation.”
And she believes seeing volunteers work through the badge system helps her reflect on how she’s created learning experiences: “As a creator, badges help you reflect on your own learning design. That’s valuable for us too.”
For mentors with limited capacity or who are looking after large numbers of volunteers, the system can empower volunteers to be more self-directed too.
“[The system] supports self-mentorship,” says Laimonas. “Even when mentors are stretched thin, badges keep the learning going”.
And the system’s possibilities don’t stop there: “We’re dreaming about a digital assistant - something like a ‘Badge GPT’ - that could help volunteers reflect or find their next challenge,” he explains.
An invitation to learn together
For organisations hosting ESC volunteers, the badge system can be used for free, and the team at Awero can offer how-to guides and support. Plus, Laimonas believes that the continuous refinement of the system will lead to better outcomes for both volunteers and hosts.
“It’s not mandatory like Youthpass,” Laimonas explains. “But the more people use it, the better it becomes. We learn together”.
To sign up to use the ESC Badge System, register at www.awero.org and send the team an email.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
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Awero not-for-profit organisation manages this platform and develops it together with leading educational organisations. The European Union's programme Erasmus+ granted co-funding for building the first version of this platform. Contact support@awero.org.
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