Italy: The new volunteers: less ideology and more action

Volunteering … by contract
Elena Pizzorni is 30 years old and has been living in Il Villaggio della Barona, a neighbourhood in Milan?s south eastern suburbs, since 2003. A special agreement characterises her rent contract: she has to volunteer. In exchange she pays an affordable rent. Il Villaggio della Barona is made up of 80 apartments, five community programmes and a bike repair store run by a social cooperative.

The foundation that launched the programme, Fondazione Cassoni, places volunteering as one of its core values. At least one member of each family that lives the 80 apartments is called on to commit to volunteering throughout the year. And if they don?t? Then they are asked to give a monetary donation to make up for not fulfilling their commitment. Elena admits that ?the fist year I had to give a donation too?. ?But then together with other members of the community we set up a cultural centre, and since then I have worked as a volunteer there regularly? she explains.

A contradiction in terms, to volunteer by contract? Elena doesn?t think so: ?No one tells you how many hours you have to do, its just a way to encourage people to give up some of their time to help others. I think the government should take it into consideration as a means for providing young people with affordable housing?.

Volunteering … for the future
Selene Biffi recently graduated from the Bocconi University in Milan and is a consultant for the UN as well as founder of Youth Action For Change (YAC), the only online platform to provide free training courses for young volunteers, activists and human rights defenders. YAC is made by young people for young people aged between 15 and 29 who live in 120 countries, 95% of these in developing countries. Selene isn?t waiting around for things to happen. She wants to be part of volunteering?s future.

?Those of us who were born in the 80?s really believe that we can be agents of change. We don?t want to rely on big NGOs or the government,? she explains. I attended the International Youth Parliament in 2004 and noticed that we all had the same problem: we didn?t know how to set up our own organisation or find information about how to finance our ideas. ?There are loads of opportunities out there, but institutions don?t know how to communicate them to young people. They use old media, like T.V and look down on new technologies? she says.

Selene lives on skype and msn and as far as she is concerned MySpace and YouTube, cell phones and podcasts are all useful activism and volunteering tools. Which doesn?t mean that we should forget about good old fashioned volunteering, like riding around Kenya on a bicycle for 2 months to raise awareness about Hiv.

Zero ideology
Zero ideology is Tomasso Migliaccio?s recipe. At thirty three Tomasso is a journalist as well as being the president of Zenit, an newly born NGO dedicated to health issues amongst immigrants. Zenit will organise training programs for health operators, provide language mediation services and special women?s only clinics to cater for the growing Muslim population. ?Traditional organisations have a strong ideological imprint, whether it be Christian or humanitarian. We on the other hand have a pragmatic approach: we are neither for or against immigration, we know that it exists and we would rather try to deal with it rather than become victimised by it? says Tommaso. According to him there are two main key elements to success: to not be afraid of paying professionals to do their job (?otherwise volunteering will become a limbo for pensioners?) and finding good communication channels (?for us these are foreign language newspapers?). His message to all of us? Say goodbye to volunteering as a part of your lives: practice it all day, every day, everywhere.