“Keep the Hype: Life After Volunteering” was a youth exchange organized by Asociación Sociocultural BreGal in Cabana de Bergantiños, Spain, in June 2023, where young people from six different countries took part in a intercultural experience to give value to the volunteering experiences that they had been part of, and explore collectively how to continue implementing activities at a local and international level to have a positive impact in the society.

The project aimed to create an environment in which participants could increase the personal and professional value that volunteering brought to their lives, as well as keep alive the spark of initiative and solidarity needed for continuing being active and responsible citizens.

During the youth exchange, the project achieved the following goals:

• Contributed to the personal development of the participants through reflection and self-analysis,
• Created innovative tools to support former volunteers and give the participants the opportunity to develop their own initiatives,
• Encouraged active participation in society of the participants,
• Improved the employability and professional self-knowledge of the participants,
• Improved competencies and key skills of the participants such as teamwork, initiative, digital skills or communication skills,
• Increased cooperation between volunteers and former volunteers and offer a creative atmosphere in which new ideas for solidarity projects can emerge,
• Promoted self-awareness and soft-skills learning.

During the project, participants had the chance to work on personal ideas of possible projects to be implemented after the end of the YE at a local or international level. This was done through a series of activities focused on shaping and structuring different ideas that participants were keen to explore.

The second part of the exchange was focused on creating outputs and organizing a final dissemination event, which took place on the second day in the city of A Coruña. For this, participants prepared different outputs:

• Two videos which can be found on Bregal’s social media.
• A toolkit about the importance of volunteering and information about how to volunteer was printed and given to the citizens of A Coruña. Click on the left column to discover it!
• A series of infographics telling the experiences of different participants in their volunteering programs, which can be found on Bregal’s social media.

Besides this, participants prepared a song and a flashmob, which were performed twice during the day. For the flashmob , they choose a song from the Galician group ‘Filhas de Cassandra’, and they used typical Galician folk dance movements.