2011 is the European Year of Volunteering. Undoubtedly, senior volunteering makes a substantial contribution to social cohesion and welfare, and is an important contribution to active aging.RIVER aims at promoting senior, intergenerational volunteering by helping to make senior volunteers’ competence development more visible. It aims at adapting Level 5, a comprehensive methodology for validating competencies acquired in informal learning settings to the specific requirements of the volunteering sector. In RIVER the Level 5 system will not only be further improved and tailored to the needs of senior volunteers, but also transformed into a comprehensive methodology for defining personal aims of senior volunteering activities, planning them accordingly, and evaluating their impact on the senior volunteer and the beneficiaries of volunteering.The assessment system describes competencies on the basis of learning outcomes and classifies them on five levels. The cognitive as well as the affective and activity-related dimensions are taken into account. Thus, informal competence development can be precisely assessed. A standard assessment procedure, a software for 3-D visualisation, and a certificate are part of the envisaged RIVER planning and assessment system.Main outcomes will include:- Groundwork paper: Level 5 and senior volunteering- RIVER senior volunteering methodology- Training workshop and coaching guidelines for learning and volunteering facilitators- Report of piloting the RIVER methodology in 5 countries- Promotional brochure: Informal learning in intergenerational volunteering activities- Final dissemination conferenceThe RIVER consortium led by die Berater, Austria, is a mixed partnership which covers Northern, Central, Southern, and Eastern Europe and unites the complementary expertise of organisations and umbrellas of the voluntary sector, adult education providers, experienced EU project actors and a research institute.