'Catalan society has volunteerism in its DNA'

Some 500 volunteers and representatives from voluntary organizations assisted the event with different sessions and workshops of the congress, framed in the European year of volunteerism. Also the importance of the roles that anonymous people take altruistically in their day to day in Catalonia was also highlighted. “Catalonia is a territory that is socially responsible”.

The inauguration also counted with the presence of the Director of the Social Wellbeing and Family Dep., Josep Lluís Cleries, the president of the Catalan Federation of Social Volunteering (FCVS), Francina Alsina, the director of the social work program “la Caixa”, Jaume Lanaspa, and Ghulam Mohammad Isaczai, head of the development section of the volunteer program and the volunteer management group of the Volunteers of United Nations.

Isaczai highlighted the importance of the history in volunteerism in Catalonia and that the II European Congress of Volunteering puts forth an important step to recognize the main challenges of volunteering and to find the solutions to respond. He also, praised the importance of “contribution of volunteerism to peace and development”. For her part, Francina Alsina cited the strengths of volunteerism, as the desire to excel, the critical sense and the contagion of Solidarity, and explained what acts are missing from volunteerism, “In the context of the entities for efforts to nurture”. The president of FCVS also asked for “Political sensibility that recognizes this social fabric”.

The II European Congress of Volunteering takes the relief of the first edition, which also is celebrated in Catalonia in the year 2008. This time in 2011 more than 500 people will reunite in Barcelona to debate and reflect about volunteerism and its important contribution on a social level.