Volunteering / By helping others, they discover themselves
Salary paid in smiles

Every morning they get up, eat breakfast and later, for eight hours a day, they teach Kenyan children English. After classes together they play football and have art workshops. They lead this kind of life for three months, sometimes even six, and do not get a penny for all this - because volunteering is not about earning money but about gratuitous help; help, which brings to some sense of life, or even saves it.

With their heart in their hand
Poznan voluntary movement each year attracts more and more young people. How does a typical volunteer look like? - 'These are mostly young persons, who worked at so called workcamps in Europe or the United States in summer. Through this experience, they got convinced that voluntary work is not a "job for pigeons", but it stimulates self-development and creativity' - explains Malgorzata Sobczyk from One World Association with its office in Poznan. 'In October we are going to organise information and integration meetings. In order to become a volunteer, one does not need any special qualifications, good will is the most important factor' - she adds.

One World Association was founded 11 years ago in Poznan by a group of devoted persons. Nowadays it employs four workers, has ca. 60 ordinary members and around 40 activists. To this one must add 410 supportive members, i.e. those taking part in workcamps in Poland and abroad. At this moment, Polish volunteers work at long-term projects in Kenya, Macedonia, Kosovo and Italy. Their work usually extends what is written in the project description. Girls in Kosovo not only teach children English but also work in the frame of "interposition" - they support stabilisation in the region by bringing two conflicted nations together in a friendly dialogue. Sometimes work is about culture animating in a certain region, taking care of the elderly, or renovating monuments.

At your own courtyard
However, one does not need to fly to Africa or Kosovo in order to serve as a volunteer. There is a lot to do 'at your own courtyard'. In Poznan, one possibility is the Regional Voluntary Centre, which has performed a role of a job matcher for potential volunteers for the last ten years and which spreads the ideas of voluntary movement and of the civil society. Statistics documenting its activities are impressive. Its database consists of 1600 entries, 214 persons have been trained this year, and as many as 295 voluntary job placements have been signed. What are the centre's projects about? - 'In the frame of the educational programme, we lead "School Volunteer Clubs". For instance, if the kids face problems in mathematics which results in bad grades, we help them to organise joint learning' - explains Agnieszka Gierszewska from the Voluntary Centre. - 'If the parents cannot afford a private coach, our volunteer can devote his evenings to helping a child in its homework. Apart from that, we organise Christmas food collections; we try to get the youth out of callousness.'

For One World Association, extremely important activities are those, which promote human rights and widen the knowledge about other nations and cultures. During the schools year, volunteers lead lessons on the theme of tolerance in Poznan secondary schools. They always try to lead them in a non-standard way, striving to awaken students' creativity, and helping them to understand and accept "the others". Antonina Malowiecka