Call for support to International Voluntary Service Organisations

Dear colleagues from International Voluntary Service Organisations,

In light of the recent floods in Serbia (May 2014) and the natural disaster that has left the country in bad condition, Young Researchers of Serbia - Voluntary Service of Serbia together with local partners is announcing volunteerworkcamps to support the reconstruction. We are involved on the national level with more than 30 organisations, mapping the areas that need reconstruction (39 municipalities in total) and that would benefit from workcamps. The main part of the workcamps involves national volunteers, but we are opening places for the international volunteers as well. The international involvement of volunteers has always been in root of our mission and we believe represents an important aspect of every nation’s recovery.

We would like to thank all the organizations who replied to our call for support and already started promoting flood relief workcamps through newsletters, brochures and websites in the past 2 months.

The encouragement you gave us puts the wind in our backs and gives us strength to deal with the situation Serbia is in.

It also shows readiness on the international level to get involved in spite of difficult financial situations we are all in, due to the shift in trends of international volunteering. We do hope that actions like this put more light to our common mission within the IVS organisations and send a strong message to our volunteers, partners and institutions on national and on international level on the importance of international youth volunteering.

The time is short to recruit volunteers as the workcamps start in the beginning of August, so we rely on your readiness to act fast.

The majority of workcamps are open only for national volunteers, as it is easier to recruit and more effective in terms of organisation and communication. However, the international dimension is very important, even if international volunteers will be involved in just a small part of this year’s workcamps.

The flood relief workcamps in Serbia will be following the usual Alliance standards. They will still have a strong educational value, but also an underlined value of solidarity, a strong statement in favour of the active role that youth has and can take in a society. However, they are not the first line of flood relief activities, which is being delivered by the government since the beginning of the floods and in the following month, but a second line of action – when the media attention decrease but there is still a lot to be done especially towards the poorest communities who have been left with nothing. This means that the flood relief workcamps will not involve any risky work and will not put the volunteers in any potential dangerous situations or ask for volunteers with specific skills, only for a well-executed emotional preparation of volunteers.

Together with our local aprtners we will continue in taking the role in long-term recovery efforts related to this disaster, so in the following years there will still be flood recovery workcamps.

Thank you.

YRS-VSS team