Leadership Mentoring Program – Riding for the Disabled Carine
02/12/2024
Project background
RDA Carine has been working to establish a leadership mentoring program designed to include young people, unemployed and people with disabilities in supporting participants in the RDA program. The pilot program will develop resources and a digital App to support easy access to training resources and recognition for volunteers. Still in its early days, the changes to this program will bring learnings for the sector on how to creatively engage neurodiverse volunteers.
The situation/problem being solved
The Need for Change – RDA Carine has a long history and RDA Australia’s is even longer so as the program has grown the volunteer strategy has needed time in the spotlight. This opportunity to review, rewrite, modernise and diversify our approach to inviting in and supporting volunteers proved an extremely worthwhile project.
The working group and survey feedback clearly states that change needs to occur to improve recruitment, diversity, retention and training of our volunteers, but needs to be achieved in a sustainable way to respect the existing culture, program needs and demographics of our 120 volunteers.
Strategy
Youth Leadership Program – An individually customised 12-month program that included a mix of structured and goal orientated, self-paced discovery.
Still in its early days, the changes to this program will bring learnings for the sector on how to creatively engage neurodiverse volunteers and further detail will be shared on completion of the project.
The Volunteer Management Activity Project Grants are funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services.
