Voluntary Labour Corps is a state budget unit which carries out state’s tasks for the benefit of young people over 15 and the unemployed up to 25 as regards employment and counteracting marginalisation and social exclusion of the youth, as well as tasks as regards their education and upbringing..
The main goal of the VLC activity is to create appropriate conditions for the youth’s social and professional development through active building of support system for the weakest groups, through organising and supporting forms of fighting poverty, unemployment and social pathology.
The main tasks of VLC:
- counteracting social maladjustment
- general knowledge and vocational teaching
- education
- preparation for active presence on the labour market
- labour exchange
- vocational guidance
- international cooperation and youth exchange
The primary objective of OHP is to create adequate conditions for proper social and vocational development of young people, including special actions that are addressed to disfavoured young people who are supported by OHP and such support consists in organization of various forms of going out of poverty, unemployment, and social pathology effects.
Actions taken by OHP are addressed to three groups of young people aged 15-25 years.
JOB AGENCY, JOB COUNSELLING, JOB INFORMATION, TRAINING
VLC offer basic services of the labor market: they serve as a job agency, they organize trainings, job counseling and provide job information. All those services are addressed to young people up to 25 years old – graduates of secondary schools and higher education institutions and educated young people already having some qualifications but threatened by unemployment or who already are jobless. Moreover, students of higher education institutions and secondary schools who would like to find a job (especially when they have no classes), gain experience and improve their financial situation, also take advantage of the job agency services offered by VLC.
EUROPEAN SOCIAL FUND
When Poland joined the European Union, the Voluntary Labor Corps – as one of the first Polish institutions – stared bringing into effect projects co-financed by the European Social Fund, within the scope of the Sectoral Operational Program Development of Human Resources. In the years of 2007-2013, according to the provisions of the Operational Program Human Resources, the VLC are still the main project initiators in the area of realization of services for youth threatened by marginalization or social exclusion.
INTERNATIONAL YOUTH EXCHANGE
The Voluntary Labor Corps gain financial resources for realization of their projects not only from the European Union but also from the Ministry of National Education and the Program “Youth” and the Polish-German Youth Cooperation. The Program “Youth” financed also the multilateral meetings – in 2006 the VLC organized 69 projects for 1 217 people. The cooperation in 2007 is carried out by 15 VLC units within the framework of the Program “Youth” and the Polish-German Youth Cooperation.