Intercultural learning opportunities in international voluntary service in sport using the example of the organisation Play Handball

In recent years, international volunteering has become very popular in Germany, and this also applies to the opportunities in sport-related development work. For young adults, this means familiarising themselves with a foreign culture and contributing their sport-related competences. At the same time, this field of work offers a wide variety of intercultural learning opportunities. This immediately raises the question of how such learning opportunities are designed and accompanied, and how they can lead to the acquisition of intercultural competences. In this study, eight young adults were interviewed about their voluntary service with the organisation Play Handball. The analysis of the interviews is carried out in the light of the process model of intercultural competences and focuses on the views of the interviewees with the help of qualitative content analysis. The results show various learning occasions within the framework of the voluntary service, which are triggered by corresponding irritations and were interpreted and reflected upon differently by the volunteers; their own previous experiences in the sport of handball are of particular importance here.