ANALYSIS
Encouraging the Volunteer Spirit in
Macedonia
While no official statistics are available, Macedonia
does not seem to be a country with a well-developed
tradition of volunteering. Typical culprits for this include the culture’s paternalistic attitude toward government (i.e., “don’t we pay taxes for that?”) or a
general preference for small scale and informal efforts (i.e., charity begins at home). If you asked the
average person on the street, they’re likely to tell
you that large-scale, “Western-style” volunteer programs won’t work here. But the Red Cross in Macedonia would beg to differ.
“To volunteer means to live a quality life, to give, to
share and to enjoy someone else’s smile. Every hour
spent volunteering is an emotional hour spent sharing goodness and wishing for change. Volunteers are
a force and an inspiration”, says Aleksandra Ristovski, National Coordinator of the Promotion of Human
Values (PHV) program at the Red Cross in Macedonia.
The Macedonian Red Cross is the oldest and by far
the biggest humanitarian organization in the country. The organization has over 7,800 registered
members and almost 3,500 registered volunteers in
addition to a network of countless others who unselfishly donate their time and skills to help others
and to improve things in the community from time
to time.
“Although some of our staff receive wages for their
professional work, it is very important to stress that
our organization depends on volunteers to serve in
various roles, for example, as members of our Executive Board,” Ristovski explains.
Youth Engagement
To most effectively instill volunteer values that will
last a lifetime, it’s best to start at a young age. That’s
why the Red Cross in Macedonia has enticed young
people of all social and ethnic backgrounds in public
schools to take part in the PHV program for the last
16 years running. Each year, some 1,200 youths interact with the Red Cross for their first time via this
project. More importantly, upwards of 80% of those
students remain engaged with the organization over
a number of years, each volunteering to help in their
own community with the organization’s continued
guidance and support.
After a training period, where students learn about
the virtues of compassion, tolerance and some very
practical skills like fundraising and media outreach,
participants are given time to devise their own small
projects that they can later develop and carry out
in their own neighborhoods. Last year alone, these
small teams successfully carried out 210 projects that
impacted 3,300 people’s daily lives. In total, these
students donated over
40,000 volunteer hours
to their local communities. The following
examples illustrate the
powerful impact these
seemingly small projects can have:
• In the town of Negotino, a team
of young people
raised funds, for
example, by selling cookies to
Emerging Macedonia Spring 2014 Issue 41
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