Opportunities and challenges of virtual workcamps
Virtual workcamps: Prospects and potentials
As is the case with in-person workcamps, mutual ex- change and getting to know others in the intercultural group were often the most interesting aspect for partic- ipants. The virtual format has some advantages in that respect compared to projects that manage to get all the volunteers together in one place. In virtual camps, par- ticipants can share their everyday home life directly with the group. Virtual sessions can put the physical distance to good use for direct cultural exchange by enabling par- ticipants to provide an insight into their home, take oth- ers with them to places in the vicinity or prepare a typical meal in their own kitchen. Striking a balance between an organisation’s content-re- lated and pedagogical objectives on the one hand and the participants’ interests and ideas on the other can, however, present a huge challenge in virtual projects. Virtual camps do not have the element of self-organ- ising a day in the camp in the same way as in-person workcamps do. Instead of cooking, cleaning and plan- ning leisure-time activities together, other opportunities need to be created in virtual camps to hand over co-re- sponsibility for the project to participants and make their involvement participatory. Involvement in setting the project’s common objective, for example in a virtual pre-meeting, can be a valuable step towards strengthen- ing self-efficacy. Commitment is another particular challenge. During in-person projects, participants are less likely to be dis- tracted by other things they could be doing, and they also have to push through those phases they find less fun, or deal with conflicts with other participants. In vir- tual projects, by contrast, logging off or not attending a video conference is an extremely easy alternative. And yet it is these phases that often hold the greatest poten- tial as regards personal development. Friction and con- flict resolution are essential for learning experiences.
It is possible to transpose the aspect of non-profit work to a virtual setting. In all three of the projects presented above, the participants produced concrete digital prod- ucts together. The virtual workcamps thus went beyond the aspect of a mere exchange or encounter. This format has advantages especially when it comes to creating dig- ital products such as virtual exhibitions, flyers or collec- tions of texts, as asynchronous work can be used in a very meaningful way. The more participatory the shared work on the end result can be, the greater the young people’s self-ef- ficacy and motivation and their commitment to the project. The biggest challenge in relation to virtual camps is inte- grating them into the local community. It can be useful in in-person workcamps to incorporate local cooperation partners when content-related instructions are given during the project implementation phase. However, an informal exchange with local young people and getting to know a local community is hardly possible, or even impossible, in virtual projects. This is where the limits to the transferability of concepts to other settings are most apparent. Virtual camps can make international volunteer work more accessible to all, meaning they can be opened up to new target groups. Young people can gain initial experience of an interna- tional exchange without having to leave their familiar surroundings. Although a digital exchange is no substi- tute for an in-person encounter, it can be a very mean- ingful addition to international youth work and open up new ways for young people to access them. And yet: online-only workcamps will in future play a more minor role. Digital elements should and will undoubtedly be in- creasingly incorporated into in-person projects in the coming years.
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