The value of identity-based voluntary social work (VIFA)
The value of identity-based voluntary social work (VIFA) is a research and development project carried out in close collaboration with the NGO LGBT Asylum.
The project examines and further develops identity-based voluntary social work, drawing on the organisation’s queer-to-queer approach, in which LGBTQ+ volunteers with permanent residence in Denmark support LGBTQ+ asylum seekers and refugees who are new to the country. VIFA connects humanities-based research with practical solutions: we produce new knowledge about experiences, relationships, and everyday life, and translate it into tools that can be integrated, tested, and adapted within LGBT Asylum’s practice.
VIFA investigates and develops identity-based voluntary social work, taking LGBT Asylum’s queer-to-queer approach as its point of departure. In this model, LGBTQ+ volunteers who live in Denmark support LGBTQ+ asylum seekers and refugees throughout the asylum process and as they navigate everyday life during and after it. The support spans both legal and social dimensions: navigating systems and authorities, but also building community, reducing isolation, strengthening wellbeing, and creating concrete opportunities to gain a foothold in work, education, housing, and daily life.
A basic challenge
The project addresses a basic challenge: the value created through identity-based peer relationships is often relational, situated, and complex. It may be obvious to those involved, yet difficult to document and translate into the formats that partners and decision-makers ask for. VIFA therefore asks what the intervention does, why it works, and how its value can be described in ways that remain faithful to lived experience while also being institutionally usable.
Practical solutions
VIFA connects humanities-based research with the development of practical solutions. We produce new knowledge about experiences, relationships, care, vulnerability, hope, and agency, and translate that knowledge into tools that can be integrated into LGBT Asylum’s practice. This means the project will result not only in publications, but also in solutions that can be implemented, tested, and adjusted along the way, such as evaluation tools, learning and supervision formats, and collaboration protocols
Three strands of work
The work brings together three strands. First, we conduct a thorough evaluation that captures effects over time from users’ perspectives. Here we examine, among other things, wellbeing, safety, social belonging, and opportunities to establish a life in Denmark, and we work to develop indicators that can accommodate both standardised measures and what the target group themselves identify as important. Second, we examine the role of the volunteer in work where one’s own identity and experience are part of the relationship. We analyse what creates meaning and motivation, but also where boundary issues, emotional strain, and risks of exhaustion emerge, and what is needed to make the work sustainable for volunteers. Third, we focus on translation and collaboration: how can the value of peer-based support become recognisable and useful in cooperation with authorities, municipalities, and other actors, without reducing the intervention to a narrow spreadsheet exercise?
LGBT Asylum is a Danish civil society organisation that works to improve conditions and rights for LGBTQ+ people in the asylum system and for LGBTQ+ refugees who are new to Denmark. The organisation provides social support and counselling in connection with asylum processes, offers networks and community to counter loneliness, and engages in advocacy in relevant political contexts.
A central part of its work is queer-to-queer peer support. Here, LGBTQ+ volunteers who live in Denmark support LGBTQ+ asylum seekers and refugees through mentoring, counselling, and community-based activities. The point is not only practical assistance, but also to create a space of recognition and trust where support can take account of vulnerability, experiences of trauma, and the particular conditions that may follow from having to substantiate one’s sexuality or gender identity within a complex system.
For VIFA, LGBT Asylum is not a case studied from a distance, but an active co-developer. The project builds on the organisation’s experience and on a shared ambition to describe and document the value that queer-to-queer work creates for users, volunteers, and partners, without reducing the intervention to what is easiest to measure.
Read more on LGBT Asylum’s website.
VIFA consists of four work packages that together document, strengthen, and translate the value of identity-based voluntary social work.
Work package 1: Long-term user evaluation
We develop and pilot an evaluation protocol that can capture effects over time through both quantitative measures and in-depth qualitative trajectories. The indicators combine standardised measures of wellbeing and safety with criteria developed together with users, ensuring that the evaluation is relevant to everyday practice while also robust as documentation.
Work package 2: The volunteer role, boundaries, and wellbeing
We examine the volunteer role and the specific demands that come with peer-based support. Drawing on interviews, observation, and shared reflection processes, we develop tools for onboarding, framing, and supervision. Deliverables include a volunteer handbook and a supervision and learning format that can be integrated into LGBT Asylum’s work.
Work package 3: Collaboration systems and institutional legibility
We analyse how the intervention works across actors and systems, for example in the encounter between user, volunteer, asylum centre, authorities, and other organisations. We map key pathways and identify points where collaboration strengthens impact, and where value risks being lost or rendered invisible. The work results in a collaboration protocol and practice-oriented recommendations.
Work package 4: Communication, translation, and dissemination
We consolidate the project’s insights and translate them into formats that can be used widely, including a report, a policy brief, workshops, and targeted communication. The project concludes with a dissemination effort in which results and tools are shared with civil society, professional communities, and relevant stakeholders.
The project has an advisory board that provides feedback and helps anchor the work across the asylum, integration, and health fields:
- Marie Sandberg, Associate Professor and Centre Director, Centre for Advanced Migration Studies, University of Copenhagen
- Marlene Spanger, Associate Professor, Global Refugee Studies, Center for Displacement, Migration and Integration, Aalborg University
- Kenneth Flex, Director, DRC Danish Refugee Council Integration
- Maja Rettrup Mørch, Senior Consultant, Danish Red Cross Asylum, Head of the Representative and Support Person Unit, Danish Red Cross Children’s Reception Centre
- Kristina Rosado, Head of Unit, 1st Asylum Office (accommodation, allocation, and special legal cases), Danish Immigration Service
- Mette Blauenfeldt, Head of Knowledge and Development, DRC Danish Refugee Council Integration
- Ditte Marie Bjerno Holst, Clinical Lead East, Checkpoint, AIDS-Fondet
- Bjarke Følner, Senior Consultant and Partner, Als Research
Researchers
Investigators from UCPH
| Name | Title | Phone | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Michael Nebeling Petersen | Associate Professor - Promotion Programme | +4535327467 |
Funding
The project is funded by VELUX FONDEN.
Grant amount: DKK 5,821,642
Period: August 2026 to July 2030
PI: Associate professor Michael Nebeling Petersen
Co-PI: Secretary General Yanaba Mompremier Rymark Sankoh
Partner
The project is a collaboration with LGBT Asylum.