A billboard campaign encouraging Poles to work as charity volunteers has been launched in the southern city of Katowice.
The campaign is in response to a decline in the number of volunteers in Poland working for NGOs and other groups.
“For several years now we have observed a volunteer crisis in Poland,” campaign coordinator Dariusz Stawik told the Polish news agency PAP. “The aim of the campaign is to show the positive energy created through helping others and to encourage people in the region to take up volunteering.”
Dariusz Stawik points out that in 2009 only about 13 percent of Poles declared that they worked as volunteers in the past twelve months. Four years earlier, such a declaration was made by 20 percent of Polish people. In Norway, the figure is 65 percent, in Germany, 45 percent.
Experts say interest in volunteering is low because Poland is still in the process of building a civic society after the fall of communism and the tradition of volunteer work is weak. Over the past four years, unemployment has been reduced and there are fewer people willing to gain work experience as volunteers. Thirdly, many young people, who are most likely to engage in volunteering, migrated abroad. (kk)
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