VOLUNTEERING INFRASTRUCTURE

8. Ethics and quality standardsfor volunteeringSome Austrian organisations, such as Wiener Hilfswerk, Vienna SocialAid, working with volunteers apply measures of quality management, thusestablishing standard procedures for recruiting, supervising and qualifyingtheir volunteers. The Austrian network of volunteer centres has agreed ona set of 10 standard criteria for advanced quality volunteer management.The development of quality standards in volunteering is also one of the keyissues in training courses for volunteer coordinators which, starting fromthe volunteer centre in Tyrol, spread out to more and more Austrian FederalStates. Since 2010 the Viennese Platform for Volunteer Coordinators hasbeen engaged in enhancing the quality standards in volunteer managementby providing regular workshops for volunteer coordinators.9. Awareness ofvolunteering opportunitiesAustrian mediaare receptive tovolunteering ifthere is a specialoccasion like theInternationalVolunteer Dayand especially ifthere are individualstories totell.The Austrian volunteer centres provide internal databases of volunteeropportunities, one of which is published on the website www.ehrenamtsboerse.at in full, administrated by Helpers Vienna (Die HelferWiens), an organisation dealing with civil protection and coordinatingdisaster management. Another on-line regional database, run by thegovernment of Upper Austria, is www.boerse-ehrenamt.at. A nationaldatabase is provided by the website www.freiwilligenweb.at, featured bythe Austrian Federal Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and ConsumerProtection.Sometimes regional governments or volunteer organisations launchawareness campaigns on volunteering, promoting volunteering by meansof newspapers or radio. The Austrian Red Cross and Caritas have especiallypromoted volunteering with effective publicity.Austrian media are receptive to volunteering if there is a special occasionlike International Volunteer Day, or an International or European Year ofVolunteering (EYV) 2011, and especially if there are individual stories totell. Sometimes the issue of participation by and for the elderly raises theattention of the media. During the EYV 2011 volunteering was promotedvery intensely by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs andConsumer Protection and the Federal Association of Welfare Organisationsby organising a Day of Caring and offering Orientation Workshops forpeople interested in volunteering.25 Volunteering infrastructure in Europe 2 Austria