Volunteering is the result of a highly conscious society

On October 6, Alla Shelyapina, deputy head of the social project “A Path Home,” held a webinar with young people from Kyrgyzstan on the development of the volunteer movement and the system of state support for it in Russia.

The audience included schoolchildren, college and university students, teachers, and heads of public organizations in Kyrgyzstan. They learned about the history of the volunteer movement in Russia, the challenges volunteers faced at the beginning, and the ethical standards for volunteers set out in both international and Russian legal and informal documents.

The participants examined the basic principles of volunteering in detail:

Solidarity — a volunteer’s work is aimed at achieving shared goals, not working against them.
Voluntary participation — no one can be compelled to act as a volunteer.
Involvement in projects, events, and activities — we are all one team.
Unpaid work — volunteers are not paid for their work, although expenses related to their activities may be reimbursed.
Reliability — a volunteer who undertakes to do a particular job must see it through to completion.
Legality — a volunteer’s activities must not violate the law.

In the second, closed part of the webinar, the speaker answered the participants’ many questions. Teachers asked her to give a lecture on state support for the volunteer movement in Russia to students of the Faculty of Law at Kyrgyz National University named after J. Balasagyn. Negotiations are currently underway to set a date and time for the online lecture.

The webinar was organized by the “Meerim Shoolasy” charitable foundation from Kyrgyzstan.

Alla Shelyapina, VEZDENASHI