I was asked by the MEDEWRKN to assist with their new project from the municipality of Eindhoven and elderly society Andromeda.
A lot of volunteer organisations rely on boardmembers that actually can no longer fulfil the amount of responsibilities that are part of the function. This problem is created and sustained by the threshold many people feel to take up a more responsible, leadership orientated role within these types of organisation. This means it is super hard to find candidates to relief board members from their tasks. This is why the MEDEWRKN was asked to explore new options to attract volunteers for leadership positions.
The organisation I was focussing on in this trajectory was Andromeda: a local community centre for elderly in my neighbourhood. They rely on a very small group of core members to keep the place running. All boardmembers would like to be relieved from their tasks (due to reasons of old-age and health) and they are very committed to transferring their knowhow to their successors. …If only we could find any.
To get a good idea for the type of tasks and commitment that is required for a board function at Andromeda, I was handed a template format from the MEDEWRKN that I would fill in during the course of multiple interviews and co-creation sessions. Next it became my task to land a new perspective on leadership within the organisation: Dividing the leadership roles into core board roles and new volunteer+ roles. If there would be multiple tiers of responsibility it might be easier to find candidates that could fulfil more specific roles.
During our co-creation sessions we decided to make a flyer that would communicate the new possibilities to be involved at the Andromeda centre. I collaborated with Minsung from Bron van Doen on the graphic design and worked on the texts with Chairwoman Lidy from Andromeda. With this flyer the project was concluded. It might not have been the most innovative solution but what is even better: it was a solution that fitted the target audience (as this audience relies more on off-line reading materials).
I hope that the flyer will reach new people and show them how they CAN be a part of the local elderly centre in our neighbourhood. I am hoping to explore a Volunteer+role of PR in the future too. I would be a great opportunity to exercise my graphic design skills.