❗ EXCLUSIVELY FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES OR CHRONIC ILLNESSES ❗

⏳⏰📅📌 APPLICATION DEADLINE: 12.01.2026 ⏳⏰📅📌

European Solidarity Corps volunteering at the Grenzenlos office

What is Grenzenlos? 
Check it out on www.grenzenlos.or.at or on Instagram and Facebook

Grenzenlos is a non-profit and non-governmental organisation, whose main aim is to promote peace and tolerance through international non-formal education programs that combine cultural integration with engagement in non-profit initiatives worldwide. 

Grenzenlos is part of the international youth exchange network (the ICYE Federation). It was founded in 1949 as a pacifist programme standing for tolerance and reconciliation between different cultures.  

Our office is in the 9^th district of Vienna (Austria), where currently 12 employees (paid staff members) are working. Many people (volunteers, voluntary co-workers, Austrians as well as internationals, young people interested in our exchange offers, etc.) visit our office regularly which makes the office a lively place to work for a volunteer, with many opportunities to meet new people.  

Grenzenlos has over 75 years of experience working with volunteering programs. Within the European Solidarity Corps, Grenzenlos has a lot of experience as a sending, coordinating, and hosting organisation. We have already hosted many volunteers at our office over the past years, usually 1 ESC volunteer per year. 

In our work, we have often experienced that the possibilities for youngsters with disability or otherwise disadvantaged youngsters to be included and integrated into voluntary services are often limited. There are usually not a lot of volunteering projects available for youngsters with disabilities, or not enough resources to support them adequately. Grenzenlos therefore exclusively hosts ESC volunteers with disabilities to offer an international volunteering experience to the otherwise disadvantaged youngsters and to counteract this inequality.  

Profile of the volunteer 

To be an ESC volunteer at Grenzenlos, you do not need any special previous experiences, no previous work experience, no specific competences, and no specific language skills. Having a basic level of English or German is an advantage, but not a must. 

HOWEVER, “Grenzenlos Without Barriers” is only available for youngsters with a disability, who are between 18 and 30 years old and live in an ESC program or partner country.  

We usually “tailor” the ESC project to the profile of each volunteer, which means that we adapt the work fields and tasks to the interests, skills, and abilities of each volunteer. Therefore, there is no “standard profile” for volunteers that we host. 

What is important to us is that you are motivated to learn more about our work and to support our organisation. You should also be open to new experiences, willing to try new things, and to challenge your personal limits. You should also be motivated to improve your language and communication skills and be ready to show initiative. 

Proposed activities for the ESC volunteer 

As a volunteer at the Grenzenlos office, you will learn:
–  about working in a non-profit NGO,
– about international youth exchanges and voluntary services,
– about lots of different international initiatives, projects, and programs,
– about office work,
– about our inclusion strategies, and you can also contribute to improve and expand them: your expertise could be used to adapt and improve our projects/ programs/ activities/ etc. to the needs and capacities of volunteers.  

As every volunteer has different abilities, varying interests, skills, and support needs, every volunteering project at Grenzenlos is different. The specific tasks and fields of action of the volunteer will be tailored to your skills, interests, and abilities. Let us know what activities you enjoy doing and what you would like to do during your volunteering at Grenzenlos! 

Generally, the main part of the project, especially in the beginning, will be working in our office and supporting the team with their daily tasks. Through that, you will have the opportunity to try out several different tasks and activities in relation to our daily work and to get to know our programs, events, and projects better. You will gain an insight into our working methods and work structure. 

Additionally, part of your activity could, for example, be to gather information, do research, visit organisations, speak to other volunteers, and compose results of your research as resource material for future exchanges. Grenzenlos’ projects focus on including and fostering the engagement of people with disability in all our programs. This means that there is a constant need for knowledge and expertise, which a volunteer with disabilities could contribute, for example, as a peer-volunteer for volunteers with and without disabilities.  

Your tasks could also be to support us in making our work more visible, supporting our marketing and communications strategies, working with social media, doing photo and video work, supporting our fairs and info-events, creating promotional material, reporting about your own volunteering experience, making accessibility checks of our offline and online materials, etc. 

Depending on the time of the year you will be with us, there might also be the possibility that you join our special events and current activities of the season. For example, during the summer you could join the short-term international volunteering projects. These projects are team volunteering programs and have a focus on the integration of both national and international youngsters with fewer opportunities, including youngsters with disability. As a volunteer at Grenzenlos, you can help the team prepare and organise the activities for the short-term projects, as well as participate in them.   

Throughout your volunteering, you will have the opportunity to take initiative, bring in your ideas, and develop your own projects, if you’d like. Grenzenlos will guide and support you with the implementation of your ideas.

Application procedure

This European Solidarity Corps (ESC) project in Vienna is coordinated by the association Grenzenlos within the MELANGE program. If you want to apply for this project, please fill in the Melange application form and send it together with your CV (curriculum vitae) and motivation letter to application@melange.wien  

Please state the name of the ESC project (Grenzenlos without barriers) in the subject of your e-mail. Grenzenlos will forward your documents to the hosting project, where the selection will be made.  

Important! Your application will only be accepted if it is complete and if you already have a supporting (sending) organisation. 

All ESC placements coordinated by Grenzenlos are generally available to everyone between the age of 18 and 30 who is residing in an ESC program or partner country. However, in the selection procedure, a preference is shown for candidates with fewer opportunities. You will be informed about the outcome of the recruitment process a few weeks after the application deadline. For more information, please visit www.melange.wien.

⏳⏰📅📌 APPLICATION DEADLINE: 12.01.2026 ⏳⏰📅📌