weltwärts: Volunteers and their Civic Engagement in Germany

Abstract

The development volunteer service “weltwärts” enables young adults to participate in a volunteer service in countries of the Global South. The weltwärts programme is implemented by over 150 civil society sending organisations and their partner organisations in the host countries. Since the programme was founded in 2007, more than 30,000 young adults have already taken part in weltwärts. Measured in terms of both the number of annual assignments and the volume of funding, weltwärts is the largest international youth volunteer service in Germany and one of the largest development volunteer services for young adults worldwide. The evaluation focuses its analysis on what volunteers learn, how they are changed by participating in weltwärts, and their civic engagement after they return to Germany. Another question pursued is whether diverse population groups take part in weltwärts and benefit from the programme’s assumed positive effects. The evaluation follows a programme-theory-based approach and implements a mixed-methods design. The core of the methodology is a quasi-experimental design based on cross-sectional surveys of volunteers and of a representative demographic sample of the weltwärts target group. This procedure enables reliable capture of data on the volunteers’ learning and the ways in which they are changed. Group discussions were also held in which volunteers’ voices were heard. Furthermore, members of the volunteers’ families and friends and representatives of the sending organisations were surveyed by means of online questionnaires. Finally, expert interviews and analyses of secondary data and documents were conducted.