Volunteering Infrastructure

WHY THIS PROGRAM?

Several important pre-conditions have to be at place for starting with the process of reconciliation and peace-building in the SEE region. Some of those pre-conditions are: empowerment of a new generation of active citizens, intensifying mobility and trust- building among the citizens of the opposing side, the appearance of solidarity and tolerance in the places where it disappears, removal of prejudice and increasing the economic and social independence of individuals in society.
Maybe this sounds like imagination, but we are aware that social changes are so slow and in other hand we are also aware that we can fight with that long process-duration and time only if we start immediately to work on changing perception of society related to stability of the region. Changes have to come from inside society, from young people who will became new generation of CHANGE-MAKERS and who will rise their children on values which they fight for – human rights, solidarity and freedom.
As you can see, a huge job needs to be done if we want quality work on reconciliation. SEEYN was looking for a magical tool that could influence the synchronized development of all these preconditions. Probably you can guess now, but VOLUNTEERING is just what we were looking for. This is also great tool for recruiting and bringing together community change-makers who will lead final countdown to positive changes in divided societies.

PHILOSOPHY BEHIND THIS PROGRAM...

Volunteering brings universal values to people and push them to go over their misunderstandings and individual conflicts.

ENOUGH MAD PEOPLE, ENOUGH STABILITY AND SOLIDARITY FOR ALL OF US IN SEE.
(MAD* – Make a Difference)

PROGRAM PILLARS

Research on volunteering inspiring and comparative practice
Advocacy on creation and adoption of volunteering policies in SEE;
Establishment of the National Volunteer Services and Local Volunteer Centers;

SEEYN MAIN ACHIEVEMENTS IN THIS PROGRAM

Research
Research done by SEEYN are available at EDUCATION AND TRAININNG CENTER program or at Network’s documents;

Advocacy
Thanks to SEEYN initiative SEEYN member organizations became leaders of establishment of national voluntary infrastructure in SEE region;
As a result of this action, almost in all SEE countries there is volunteering policy at place and SEEYN members are leaders
in this field and still working on lobbing for policy improvement;
In last 12 year of our work on changing awareness on importance of volunteering and its benefits for society,
we can say that SEEYN and its members influenced those changes and today volunteering is far more accepted by citizens and governments
as an ultimate value than before;
Main indicator of success is that our member organization are not organizing big recruiting campaigns anymore
as they did 12 years ago, since volunteers are knocking on their doors on daily basis.

National Volunteer Services
In almost all countries of the SEE region SEEYN member organizations became National Volunteer Services
with tasks to educate other organizations about volunteering, than to establish National awards for volunteering
as well as to work on overall volunteering infrastructure;
They also developed programs for development of the Local Volunteer Centers and in some countries there is a
functional national network of local volunteer centers.

PLANS for 2016.

-    To re-designe Volunteer Infrastructure program and try to create additional values to independent work of the member organizations active in this field;
-    To work on strenghtening of partnership with organization that deal with volunteering on international level;