Fighting violence through volunteering

Borbála Varga, 31, is a volunteer at NANE Women’s Rights Association, an NGO based in Budapest combating domestic violence against women and children. Its goal is to promote changes in the Hungarian legal system to provide juridical protection for women and children against discrimination and violence. NANE, founded in 1994, is the only NGO in Hungary running a hotline for battered women and children.

When and how did you start your experience as a volunteer?

I started at the age of 16, helping young people with drug problems and I have been volunteering at NANE since 2005.

What do you do at NANE?

I work at the hotline, a phone service that has been operational since 1994 and that is managed by volunteers, to help victims of domestic violence. It is mostly women who call us, sometimes children. Men call us rarely, to try to help their partners or relatives.

Phones ring continuously: domestic violence is very common in Hungary. Global statistics say that one in five women is a victim of domestic violence at some point in her lifetime.

What is innovative about NANE?

In Hungary people think that when a woman is beaten, it is her fault: if she had behaved better the man wouldn’t have acted like that. Thanks to NANE women for the first time in their life don’t feel guilty. What we do when women call us is to listen to them and understand them without being judgemental. While listening, we help victims rebuild their self-confidence, which has been destroyed by the abusing relationship.

How much time do you dedicate per week to volunteering?

Five to ten hours per week, and only at night, because most of our volunteers, including myself, have a paid job during the day. For example I am programme coordinator in a research institute at the Central European University in Budapest, where I do researches focused on gender equality and domestic violence.

If you had to persuade a friend of yours to do volunteering what would you tell them?

When you join a voluntary association you think how much you want to help other people and don’t realize how much these people can help you. Volunteering at NANE has given me and still gives me much more satisfaction than my daily job.

Would you like to do volunteering in other European country? 

I would like to volunteer in Spain and in Austria because these countries guarantee better women’s rights and have a better welfare state than in Hungary.

2011 will be the European year of volunteering. What do you expect from this year?

I think it will stimulate more people to do volunteering. I hope it will help to change the perception in Hungary towards volunteering, which is still not considered as a value. People in Hungary don’t understand why you work for free; they think you do voluntary work because you can’t get a paid job. People volunteering are considered as strange and losers.