{"id":875,"date":"2011-05-25T15:11:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-25T14:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/2011\/05\/25\/volunteer-make-a-difference\/"},"modified":"2011-10-13T15:11:26","modified_gmt":"2011-10-13T14:11:26","slug":"volunteer-make-a-difference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/2011\/05\/25\/volunteer-make-a-difference\/","title":{"rendered":""Volunteer! Make a difference!""},"content":{"rendered":"

Together with members of AEGEE-Budapest, AEGEE-Debrecen, AEGEE-Piliscsaba and AEGEE-P\u00e9cs, Alfredo and me represented AEGEE at the 2nd EU-Level Thematic Conference for the European Year of Volunteering 2011<\/strong> that took place in Brussels this Monday and Tuesday, 23rd-24th May.<\/p>\n

I must admit that the main insight won during this conference was not what I had expected or hoped for. Originally planned for 400 participants, the conference united only around 250 representatives of different volunteering organisations from all over the European Union, despite the fact that all costs were covered by the European Commission. One explanation may be the general lack of promotion that happens to be one of<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

the most persistent characteristics of the European Year of Volunteering (EYV 2011) – surprisingly, since the aim of this Year is precisely to promote the concept of volunteering and increase its appreciation in Europe. Another explanation may be that the exact purpose and programme of the conference were only disclosed on the very day of arrival, which made it rather difficult to anticipate the added value of one’s participation. Anyway, as a member of the EYV 2011 Alliance, AEGEE was present.<\/div>\n
\n
According to the moderation, the purpose of the conference was to give input to the European Commission from the grassroots of the volunteering world. We worked mainly on three subjects: best practices in volunteering, obstacles to volunteering, and the question of how to enhance the appreciation of volunteering among the European population. Positively, most of the time was spent in small groups of changing composition, which gave us the opportunity to talk to many different people and broaden our horizon. But as far as I can judge, the outcome of these discussions will be of very questionable value for the European Commission’s policy work in the near future. Most discussions ended without concrete conclusions or new insights, the main reason being that there was no time for participants from often fundamentally different ‘volunteering realities’ to exchange ideas and agree on a common understanding of what ‘volunteering’ actually means. In the end, the big product of the conference was a huge mind map with different topics that should be addressed by the European Commission, and a few fragile elaborations in those fields that were rated as the most relevant.<\/div>\n
Apart from the thematic group work, quite spectacular key note speakers honoured us with their presence, most notably Mrs. Reding of the European Commission, European Parliament President Mr. Jerzy Buzek, and a representative of the Hungarian EU Presidency. Disappointingly, their speeches merely reiterated the state of art in the current volunteering discourse, emphasizing the importance of volunteering for society and full of phrases of praise for us, the volunteering community, that sounded hollow even though I would never doubt their honesty. It was noticeable that these people that are not directly involved in the implementation of the EYV 2011 just didn’t have much to tell us. The only value of their presence was – their presence, giving moral and symbolic support to our cause which I do of course appreciate.<\/div>\n
Whenever active citizens from all over Europe come together, interesting encounters and discussions are guaranteed, and without doubt this has been the most positive aspect of our participation. D\u00f3ra, who represented not only AEGEE-Piliscsaba but also the new Flagship team, managed to collect various valuable contacts for the Social Inclusion project that is currently under development, and I myself also met some interesting people. But for me and for many people I talked to, this is where the practical benefit of the conference ended.<\/div>\n
All in all, these two days have been interesting enough, and even though the European Commission may not be able to draw as much input from it as intended, I would not say that I wasted my time. However, what was indeed wasted was money, and this happened to such a shocking extent that I felt constantly embarrassed to be part of it all. Of course, it is not easy to find a conference place that has the capacity to host 400 people. I know that it is common practice to hold such meetings in hotels. And I don’t even really mind all the small luxuries like the fancy food and the wine served on the expenses of the European Commission. But it is absolutely scandalous that some of our own participants had their flights booked from Budapest to Brussels for more than 1000 (sic!) Euro! Not only does this ridicule our continuous fruitless efforts to get only a few hundred Euro of financial support for our projects. Most of all, it makes it kind of impossible for me or anyone else to defend and justify the political project of European integration – if this is what it looks like in practice.<\/div>\n
That was the main insight, and it is a very painful one.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Together with members of AEGEE-Budapest, AEGEE-Debrecen, AEGEE-Piliscsaba and AEGEE-P\u00e9cs, Alfredo and me represented AEGEE at the 2nd EU-Level Thematic Conference for the European Year of Volunteering 2011 that took place in Brussels this Monday and Tuesday, 23rd-24th May. I must admit that the main insight won during this conference was not what I had expected or hoped for. Originally planned… Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":1809,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=875"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1808,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875\/revisions\/1808"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}