European Solidarity Corps Projects Responding to COVID-19: Implications for Future Crises

Abstract

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world in an unprecedented way, affecting various areas of the economy and society, including nonprofits and volunteering. However, nonprofits and volunteering did not just face challenges due to the pandemic; they also played a role in dealing with it. This article focuses on the European Solidarity Corps (ESC), an EU initiative that promotes solidarity through volunteering in countries worldwide. There was a content analysis of all the ESC projects with pandemic-relevant keywords. Though the ESC requests for proposals in the first year of the pandemic did not address the pandemic, about 8% of projects explicitly named the pandemic as either a main or secondary reason for the projects. The ESC projects represent a way to relatively flexibly allocate public funding for local and international volunteer projects dealing with various humanitarian crises, such as COVID-19 or the war in Ukraine.