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The fourth edition of the EY GDS Volunteer Festival is being launched. It will help 1,500 people
Open doors for young people from Ukraine, meetings with business representatives, creation of a space for an author's podcast. The Volunteer Festival, a social project of EY GDS, will be launched on November 25. This is one of many local initiatives through which the corporation wants to improve the lives of up to 1 billion people around the world.
This is the fourth edition of the Volunteer Festival organized by EY. It will begin on November 25 and last until December 8, 2023. This time it will be held in Wroclaw and Warsaw. EY GDS estimates that 470 employees will be involved, and as many as 1,500 people will be its beneficiaries.
Support for young talent
For starters, on November 25, 2023, EY GDS employees will invite young talents to a Diversity Leadership Workshop, i.e. meetings with business representatives. The event will be organized in partnership with WrOpenUp. The theme will be promoting diversity and inclusivity in the workplace and developing leadership skills related to managing a diverse team.
During the event, young people will have the opportunity to participate in interactive workshops led by experienced EY GDS specialists in various fields. Their goal is to show what skills and professions of the future are worth investing in and how to optimally build a career path to find your way in the Polish labor market.
Four days off for volunteering
EY GDS employees can take a two-day volunteer leave twice a year to engage in social and environmental initiatives.
Our mission is very clear. Ultimately, we want to impact the lives of a billion people by creating opportunities for our employees to make a positive difference. I am extremely proud of our colleagues who are constantly engaged in creating a better world.
Dominik Wozniak, head of EY GDS Poland
With a view to young people from Ukraine
An important part of the fourth edition of the Volunteer Festival will be an open door for young people from Ukraine, which will run from November 28 to December 8. The initiative will be carried out in cooperation with the Youth Entrepreneurship Foundation, which is part of the global Junior Achievement network.
During the event, young people will have the opportunity to participate in interactive workshops led by experienced EY GDS specialists in various fields.
In addition, there will also be a Social Innovation Relay - an international competition for high school students for the best innovative business idea that addresses a social need in: education, health, social inclusion, improving quality of life and sustainable development.
They will create innovative business ideas
During the projects, students will, among other things, conduct market research and research the needs of their customers and target audience, develop an idea for a social innovation that will contribute to solving social problems in their local environment, and then plan how to implement this innovation in a social enterprise under the guidance of mentors.
These activities will provide real and practical help in creating innovative business ideas for young people. The knowledge and experience gained will certainly be useful to the students in the future.
Malgorzata Sobkowicz, president of the Youth Entrepreneurship Foundation
They will talk without evaluation
An element of the Volunteer Festival is cooperation with Teach for Poland, a foundation that works to eliminate educational inequalities and improve the quality of the education system so that every child in Poland has a chance to discover and develop his or her potential.
Teach for Poland is changing the reality of Polish schools from the inside, making the transformation from the role of a teacher. EY GDS staff are involved in organizing mentoring sessions for teachers and workshops for teachers and their students. These meetings are designed to prepare schools to create and implement community projects that respond to current social issues relevant to young people. Both teachers and students learn skills in areas such as project management, teamwork and leadership.
In the current edition, EY GDS staff are also preparing teens to create a podcast called "Conversations Without Judgment." The teens will invite experts, parents and teachers to participate in conversations on topics socially relevant to them.
They have already helped 4,000 people
In 2022 alone, more than 600 people took part in the two editions of the Volunteer Festival, reaching more than 4 thousand beneficiaries with their help. Cooperation with, among others, the Gaia Association, the WrOpenUp Foundation and the Youth Entrepreneurship Foundation contributed to this.