"Telephone Emergency Services (TES) exist for more than half a century across Europe. Each registered crisis helpline offers emotional support, crisis intervention and suicide prevention counseling in a strictly non-judgmental, anonymous way - via telephone, email and chat. Topics range from feelings of loneliness to questions of parenting, domestic and sexual violence, psychiatric illness and suicidal tendencies. All TES support is strictly confidential and free of charge, available to every human being regardless of age, gender and faith. The common feature of all crisis helplines across Europe is that all the work on the phone is done by qualified volunteer workers, carefully trained and supported by full- and part time staff members working on crisis helplines. Most European TES-organisations have joined the umbrella organisation IFOTES Europe e.V. , the International Federation of Telephone Emergency Services. IFOTES works with 25,000 trained volunteers. 600 full- and part time staff cover over five million calls and 40.000 internet encounters annually. All volunteers benefit from training, supervision and counseling. The vast majority of volunteers are in the age range between 50 and 70 years, however, the proportion of younger people who help and advice via email and chat seek is considerably higher. For this reason the proposed YOUhTES project will explore new paths and take action to increasingly find and attract young adults to work at crisis centers and helplines.The global objective of the project “YOUThES - Recruiting young volunteers for crisis help-lines” was to optimize TES´ work and to facilitate the rejuvenation of volunteer workforce at crisis centers and helplines. The rising demand for talks on the phone but also via chat and email support makes it necessary to find especially younger employees who are as so-called ""digital natives"" familiar with the new media. Among the different members many recruitment strategies and experiences exist that have been developed over the years on a regional level. The diversity of approaches to recruit volunteers in Europe is well known but never had been shared systematically to build the best practice knowledge - especially for younger people.Therefore, the international consortium of 8 NGOS from 7 EU countries (DE, IT, HU, FR, FI, NO, AT) led by IFOTES Europe e.V., entered twice a year into an intensive exchange in order to share, discuss and develop possible strategies for recruitment, motivation, skills enhancement and appropriate mentoring of young people at crisis support helplines. The Strategic Partnership seeked to achieve an additional value of knowledge and experience to each partner throughout common reflection and exchange on best practices of recruiting young volunteers working for the emergency hotlines of the partner organizations.The partnership did mainly focus on exchange know-how and best practice in the following areas: Statistical review and exchange of age structures at TES and crisis helplines; strategies in volunteering on a national and local level; strategies in volunteering in using different media and internet; modelling and conception of best practice for recruiting young volunteers and motivation, promotion and multiplier activities for young volunteers in crisis helplines. The results of the Strategic Partnership can be downloaded as a practice-tool with recommendations in the recruitment, selection, qualification and mentoring by young volunteers in crisis aid. The full manual is available in English as ""Manual for best practice in recruiting young volunteers in Telephone Emergency Services"" and is also available in a summary handbook version in 10 languages (EN; ES; FI; FR; GE; HU; IT; NL; NO; SL)."

"According to the International Association of Telephone Emergency Services (IFOTES), there are about 350 crisis centers in Europe with over 20,000 volunteers providing emergency assistance day and night in over 4 million telephone calls and an increasing number of internet contacts, over 200,000 in 2019. 2-3 thousand volunteers have to be trained every year to keep the crisis helpline working around the clock.The task of crisis services is to accompany those people, to provide contact or relationship, to relieve them emotionally, to give orientation and, if necessary, to absorb suicidal crises. Most crisis services work with volunteers who are carefully trained for this responsible activity for months. The need for chat advice is growing, people who cannot talk about their problems or want to use the “silent” chat to get advice and support. Experience shows that the more difficult problems are named in the chat. Often it is about (sexual) experiences of violence, abuse and in many cases also about suicide. Therefore, there is also a great demand for volunteers in the chat. These must be well trained and accompanied and supervised in their counselling work in the chat. In order to prevent many volunteers from switching from telephone counselling to chat counselling and being absent on the telephone, it is urgently necessary to train people specifically for chat work. Here, an exchange about the experiences and procedures in the participating European countries at the beginning of the project is of great importance.The proposed project will be organized by 6 European NGOs which maintain Telephone Emergency Services (TES).Aim of the projectThe aim of the Strategic Partnership ""Chat Your Value (CYV)"" is to achieve an additional value of knowledge and experience throughout common reflection and exchange on best practices of communicating, recruiting and training young volunteers to work in the chat service of helplines, and exploring possible structural changes in TES to allow young people to join and stay in TES.European dimensionMost of the TES have more or less a long tradition between 20 and 60 years and independent historical development. And although they work under the same umbrella and with the same objectives they developed their individual professionalism on a national or local level. All the partners are involved in very active national networks of crisis centres. They profit from the national exchange of knowledge and experiences. Because of a very similar structure and purpose of crisis centres all over Europe, there must be even a higher benefit of cooperation on European level.The common feature of all the hotlines across Europe is that all the work on the phone and in chat is done by trained volunteer workers, carefully trained and supported by full- and part time staff members working on crisis helplines. During the years the crisis centres developed their own training strategies and tools for the education of consultants for telephone and chat. ""Chat your Value (CYV)"" also wants to focus the diversity of listeners across Europe. There is an important common interest of all partners to explore the gender structure of the listeners and to point out strategies how to adjust the training and recruitment instruments appropriately to gender specifics. Most of the partners´ crisis centres have the difficulty to recruit and keep young male listeners. All the partners will try to answer the questions linked to gender aspects, e.g. what are effective strategies on equal recruitment and qualifying male and female listeners for chat consultancy.In addition, cultural and religious aspects of reasons of calling become more and more a common point of attention, as multiculturalism and multi-religiousness are no more the remark of just few European areas. Therefore, the partners will learn from each other how to consider the type of personal crises of callers in combination with their cultural and religious background.ResultsThe work programme is focussed on sharing and exchange of good practice and foresees 5 Transnational Partner Meetings (DE, FR, ES, BE, IT).During these meetings, a document that will be developed together by the partnership is a best practice handbook with recommendations and practical examples on three main priorities/actions:1.Possible TES changes in the management of the service and human resources, especially on regard of young volunteers 2.A communication campaign aimed to recruit young volunteers, especially for the chat service3.Guidelines for training young volunteers in listening skills, adopting innovative tools developed in the European TES environment"

"In all European Member States there are telephone or Internet-based crisis helplines for people in need, with suicidal intentions, diverse mental health problems and many life-limiting problems. The task of crisis services is to accompany those people, to provide contact or relationship, to relieve them emotionally, to give orientation and, if necessary, to absorb suicidal crises. Most crisis services work with volunteers who are carefully prepared for this responsible activity for months. According to the International Association of Telephone Emergency Services (IFOTES), there are about 350 crisis centers in Europe with over 20,000 volunteers providing emergency assistance day and night in over 4 million telephone calls and over 100.000 internet contacts. 2-3 thousand volunteers have to be trained every year to keep the crisis helpline around the clock. The recruitment of volunteers is complex and costly and ongoing training is needed. The core competence for crisis support is listening.Against this background, 9 partners from 6 EU Member States have joined in an interdisciplinary consortium with the aim to expand the existing knowledge about listening skills more individually, to study the architecture of listening, to measure the competences of human beings and their ability to heart-listen, and to give new attitudes about the technique and art of competent listening. The Strategic Partnership consist of 6 Telephone Emergency Services (TES) from DE, IT, HU, FR, NL, ES, one research center specialised in emotional and mental health (DE), a training provider and consultancy in the field of social skills, skills assessment and vocational guidance (IT) and a developer of digital platform solutions (DE).The main outcome of the project will be the MonaLiSa testing and learning instrument which allows people to measure their individual listening skills competence (questionnaire) and they will get support to improve listening by using individually suggested learning nuggets on the base of the test. The learning- instrument will be created as a Web-Application that can be connected to different Webpages of institutes which promote listening skills and emotional support in Europe and it will be translated in seven languages (English, German, Italian, Hungarian, French, Spanish, Dutch).It will be an open digital educational resource that enables lifelong learning in the field of soft skill competences. It will help people to develop individual competences in listening, social competence and dialogue competence internationally.The proposal aims at making lifelong learning and mobility a reality, by creating flexible learning pathways and addressing adult learners which can be involved at different stage of their life encouraging international mobility and networking. The proposal will thus pave the way to the EU 2020 target of raising adult education attainment, by making it more attractive with new cross-sectoral subject topics of current international relevance and by encouraging CSO capacity building and the acquisition of key competences through innovative adult education.This project is christened by the acronym “MonaLiSa”: Measurement of nowadays advanced Listening-Skills attitudes. Mona Lisa smiles as an emotionally balanced and Listening-Skills competent person, she is internationally known and this year is the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonorado da Vinci, who spent several months doing mathematical and physical research in libraries and among scholars. Here he had been appointed as a consultant regarding some architectural difficulties in the construction of a cathedral. With the studies on body proportions and faces and anatomical studies, he wanted to ""get to know the inside of the person"" exactly. With the Erasmus+ project MonaLiSa we want to study the architecture of listening to measure the competences of human being and it’s ability to heart-listen, and we want to give new attitudes about the technique and art of competent listening."