The changing nature of volunteering and the cross-border mobility: where does learning come from?

This paper revisits the more conventional approaches of volunteering, by looking into the experiences of young people involved in long-term cross-border volunteering in Romania. Drawing on qualitative interviews with European Voluntary Service volunteers, the paper examines how this experience is intersecting their learning trajectories. The research argues that volunteering is more complex than previously assumed and calls for a way to overcome the inertia that positions it as inherently altruistic. It argues that hosting organisations and young people may hold different expectations and notions of volunteering. Whilst organisations seem to understand volunteering as a ‘gift of time’, for young people volunteering is rationally driven and instrumental for learning. The paper argues that cross-border volunteering has a silent educational potential that remains underutilised and grounded in an established rhetoric of learning as inherent when volunteering. Ultimately, the article calls for organisations to be proactive in enhancing their educational potential and to embrace deliberate strategies that support volunteers learning.