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The focus of this article is on school volunteering programmes (SVP) and their role in developing characteristics of sustainability citizenship (SC) in students. SC expands the concept of citizenship in the sense that the scope of citizen agency has expanded to include concern for global well-being (Micheletti and Stole, 2012). It targets all dimensions of sustainable development, and the need to develop characteristics of SC in schools stems from the fact that young people today face complex and existential global challenges. Being knowledgeable about sustainable development is not enough to solve these challenges, but it is necessary to connect the school with the community to achieve active student participation and enable experiential learning, engaged action, and reflection (Wals, 2015). SVP have the potential to enable the above and are also referred to as schools for democracy, where young people develop various skills and sensitise themselves to the needs of their community (Quintelier, 2008). SVP are a novelty in the Croatian education system and have been intensively established for the past ten years with the help of civil society organizations. The cooperation of schools with different organizations in the community is recognized as one of the key factors in creating a positive experience for student volunteers, since they it provides the possibility of direct and quick insight into one's own contribution to positive changes in the community (Pancer, 2007). SVP, although primarily still a platform with humanistic ideas of interpersonal relations, enters the sphere of posthumanism through the displacement of the school environment from the school to the wider environment, which the student interprets as “more normal and more natural”. A qualitative case study (six cases) was carried out with the aim of better understanding the SVP in secondary schools, and in this paper we will present the preliminary results of the thematic analysis of the focus groups. A total of 38 student volunteers, with at least one year of experience participating in volunteer activities, from secondary schools that integrated SVP into the curriculum. Our thematic analysis of the research results suggests that volunteering within the school has several meanings for students: the act of helping others, but also oneself, a sense of belonging to the community (both school and local) and a sense of responsibility for its improvement and contribution. Furthermore, topics such as the acquisition of different skills were opened and an important change in the experience of the school, but also of teachers and other students. In addition, one of the more important topics that this emergent analysis deals with is the change related to the attitude towards the wider social community and civic activities, but also in the attitude towards other people, family and friends. Volunteering encourages students to think deeply about themselves and the world around them, and cultivates them for active, socially responsible, global and sustainability citizenship. In conclusion, this paper tackles the potential for the existing paradigm of education turning into a transformative and empathic one in order to empower young people for active and responsible engagement in the community. In the future, such engagement would not only be focused on the concept of human community, which remains important, but the environment with all its elements. |
