What does it mean to be a volunteer?

Many of us don’t fully understand the idea of volunteering. Many think that to be a volunteer means to work without being paid or to waste your time helping others than yourself. This is what, nowadays, Romanians think about it. I am trying to change that perception and to make them understand that to be a volunteer means so much to themselves and to their society.

To be a volunteer has only advantages: to get involved in different activities that can keep you active and not be so connected to your daily job; doing something new and creative that can help you gather more information, enlarge your knowledge, taking on new skills; meeting new people, making friends and developing your networking; changing the scenery..not only work and home; participating at events that can improve your life style and changing your way of thinking: become open-minded, a sociable and caring person, develop empathy. You can be proud of yourself that you helped someone, you made a change in someone’s life.
Besides all these, you are helping the society to get more involved in civic matters.
European Volunteer Centre on http://www.cev.be/56-why_volunteering_matters!_56-EN.html is explaining exactly what volunteering means and why we all should do that as a European citizen.
I will show you just one paragraph from there: "Volunteering is an significant economic factor. The voluntary sector contributes an estimated 5% to the GDP of our national economies (according to a recent Johns Hopkins University Study) and many voluntary sector organisations depend heavily on the work of volunteers to carry out their activities”.

You can also work as a volunteer for a lot of international organisations like UNICEF, Youth Action for Peace, Service Civil International..all the list with the organisations you can find it here: http://www.cev.be/108-international_volunteer_opportunities-EN.html.
European Volunteer Oportunities: http://www.cev.be/105-european_volunteer_opportunities-EN.html; And for the ones who are internet addicted: online volunteering: http://www.cev.be/104-online_volunteering-EN.html .

In Romania all the organisations need your help. One in particular is IHTIS Independent life- association who helps youngsters with disabilities have a normal life. IHTIS wants your support in building a medical centre. Their new campaign is called: “350.000Euro= Solidaritatea a 350.000 de oameni”- The solidarity of 350.000 people.
You can help them raise this money if you make a donation of only 1 Euro in the following bank accounts of BCR- Dorohoi agency (fiscal code: 16690411).
RO14RNCB0044002865610001- for Romanian lei
RO84RNCB0044002865610002- for Euros
RO57RNCB0044002855610003- for Dollars.
If you don’t donate, you can become a volunteer and help them raise this money. You can start now by disseminating this information. See? It is so easy..
I think that everybody should be, once in their lifetime, a volunteer..so what are you waiting for??