Support young people to volunteer

In 2018, we undertook the Growing up in Queensland project, which engaged over 7,000 young Queenslanders aged between four and 18 years, to hear their thoughts, views and opinions about their community, hopes and dreams and their most important issues. The findings were released in This place I call home: the views of children and young people on growing up in Queensland.

Children and young people told us volunteering is a good way to gain useful skills to improve future employability and to give back to the community. However, they also said they were often prevented from volunteering because of their age. One secondary student in south-east Queensland reported, 

Even volunteering is difficult to get into if you are trying to get experience. We wanted to help out at the Children’s Hospital and we found out you have to be aged 18 to volunteer.

To address these concerns, we worked with Volunteering Queensland to speak to volunteer-involving organisations across Queensland about ways to increase and support youth volunteering. The findings are in our Young people volunteering: Removing the barriers - Growing Up in Queensland issues paper. 

The Issues Paper contains information about legal and policy concerns and includes consultation feedback from volunteer-involving organisations and children and young people. It looks at youth volunteering across three main issues:

• employment and economic outcomes
• individual and community wellbeing
• barriers and opportunities.

The Issues Paper also asks readers to reflect on important questions on policy, strategy and communication to support young volunteers.

Accessible versions of the linked documents are available on request, email website@qfcc.qld.gov.au