Today’s post comes from Mauro Cipparone, one of the co-founders of Romaltruista, a HandsOn Network affiliate in Rome, Italy.

“How does this way of volunteering REALLY work?” was the question that kept me wondering.

Almost 2 years ago, Odile and I had just spent time interviewing Pedro, the head of SAI-Milano. SAI helps immigrants with legal matters as well as in finding a job. I knew Pedro for several years, having volunteered in SAI myself when I was living in Milan.

Odile is the founder of Milanoaltruista (HandsOn Milan, Italy), which didn’t exist yet at that time, and I was trying to help her with getting a feel for what issues and questions prospective partners might have in working with an organization such as HandsOn, particularly in a country such as Italy where “giving back” is not as much part of the culture as in other countries.

Pedro felt quite skeptical. “How can you take a Mr. or Mrs. anyone and put them in front of people with real issues and needs? How will they know what to do?”

To become a SAI volunteer, extensive training is provided, followed by a period of working alongside an experienced volunteer. SAI volunteers are very experienced, however, they are few, and mostly retired. Very few younger people commit to volunteering there – it’s too inflexible.

I felt quite unprepared to answer. I had my own ‘what ifs.’ For example, how to manage risks and ensure volunteers do not cause problems to the clients they are trying to help or have problems themselves? When I made my mind up, two years later, that I wanted to start-up Handson Rome (Romaltruista) together with some friends, I decided my first task was to really understand how projects work and what motivates people to volunteer the HandsOn way. A friend of mine had invited me to visit him in New York, so I decided to go there and spend a week volunteering HandsOn on projects.

First, I attended the compulsory orientation.

We were met by a very energetic long term team leader. I was struck by the enthusiasm that was coming across, and the wide range of volunteering opportunities. The crowd was mostly quite young – exactly the people we wanted to engage in Italy. The gentleman did a great job at explaining how it’s “as much or as little volunteering as you want” – precisely the type of volunteering that is missing in Italy.

In the following days, I have been helping children with SAT preparation, working in the Native American film festival, serving lunch and dancing with Holocaust survivors, writing CVs, teaching about the environment, taking kids to the Natural History Museum, helping children to do theatre.

I believe the key success factor of these events is the team leaders. I was impressed to see how far they go and how much energy they put to make projects a success. For example, Kimberly, team leader of the environmental project, became an environmental expert starting from scratch and designed the syllabus of the environmental training herself, while creating an intranet to share resources with fellow team leaders that run similar projects around New York.

I understood that the key to involving and using effectively one-off volunteers without experience lies both in the quality and enthusiasm of team leaders, and in the careful design of the project.

Risk management is ensured by keeping people together as a group and by ensuring partner organization staff and team leader monitoring. Finally, I have understood that when people genuinely want to help, their hearts lead them to figure out the right way to do it, even if they don’t have extensive training behind them. In the end, it can be very rewarding for both the giver and the receiver of help.

It has been a very rewarding experience, both in terms of providing answers to my questions, and personally. Thanks to the help of Handson network, I also had the chance to meet several people of the New York Cares management team, who gave me a very insightful view of how the organization is run – a precious bonus, that I hope will help us to avoid some mistakes and focus on the key issues from day one while we try to start up handson in Rome. I wish to thank Handson Network and New York Cares for the great support and inspiration that they provided…. and for the feeling of being welcomed  into a very large family- a much needed sensation as we embark upon such a challenging start up!