This affirmation was made by the president of the Catalan government, Artur Mas, in the first session of the European Congress of Volunteering. The conclusions of the Barcelona congress will be the bases of the second part for the National Plan of Volunteer Action and Associations.
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.
The Pre-congress phase begins, and it wants to move to the online participation, in a European level, of the different social agents involved and related in the world of the voluntary action. Now the web is presented, both for the Congress and for the online Congress, in Spanish, Catalan and English.
With the offer, the participation before the Congress is stimulated. The Congress has already web and resources of online participation, gathering data, where it takes place -in Barcelona- the schedules, aims and programs. We remind you that the Congress will be the 9th , 10th and 11th November 2011.
2011 is the European Year of the Voluntary work, and this Congress is, in Catalonia, the central activity to celebrate the entail of thousands of persons in the voluntary work.
The Yearbook 2011 of the Third Social Sector of Catalonia already has gone out. This last year of work continued has given his fruit, in the publication that deepens in the understanding of the social sector and his situation in front of the current context.
The Yearbook constitutes a tool for the continuous improvement of the Third Social Sector, that is a part relieving of the Third Catalan Sector (the Third Catalan Sector is composat for all the organizations without spirit of lucre -associations, foundations and cooperatives of social initiative- that do activities in several fields of performance, how the cooperation, environmental, cultural, sportive, social,...).
The publication does a reflection around the challenges of the Catalan social entities, identifying 5 keys to continue advancing in the consolidation of the Third Social Sector:
You will find more information on the current diagnostic of the sector to the Yearbook 2011. They are more than 150 pages of useful reflection to can direct toward the future of the Third Social Sector. To download it, do click here.
The Yearbook 2011 presented to the III Congress of the Third Social Sector of Catalonia celebrated the 24 and 25 of March. You can see the document that explains the process of realization and does a route for the main contained here.
