March 30, 2020 / By mobanmarket
Markus Held on why he has high hopes for the European Year of Volunteering.The year of the helper
Next year has been designated the European Year of Volunteering, a decision Markus Held, the director of the European Volunteer Centre (CEV), celebrated by opening a bottle of champagne with his colleagues.
“All the signs were that it wouldn’t be 2011,” Held recalls. “And then we suddenly got an informal email giving us the go-ahead.”
Since then, the decision has been formalised, planning work has started and a logo was recently chosen. The CEV, which acts as facilitator for the alliance of 22 organisations that lobbied for the Year of Volunteering, is convinced the year will generate a large number of ideas, discussions and policies.
“Once you have a ‘year’, you can’t get the topic off the agenda. It will be stuck there,” says Held. “It will set a precedent on the policy agenda.”
The German has been involved in volunteering since his student days, when he spent a year in France working with disadvantaged and socially excluded youths, and another year in Bolivia working in a residential care centre for street children. He calls these experiences “the school of life”, an opportunity to “learn what happens outside your own bubble”.
It was these volunteer placements that made him switch career paths, from wanting to become a teacher to pursuing social work. After a year as a social worker in a Berlin residential centre for homeless men who had turned to prostitution, Held decided to link this social engagement with his interest in politics, languages and travel.
He went on a one-year master’s degree course in European public policy, a course that was split between Paris, London and Brussels. His thesis was on civil dialogue and the role of non-governmental organisations in EU decision-making and, by chance, one of the people he interviewed for his thesis had a job opening in Brussels. He got the position, as a policy assistant at the EU Civil Society Contact Group, and has been based in Brussels ever since.
When Held joined the CEV in 2004, it was basically just him and an assistant in Brussels; today he manages an office of seven. During this time, he has also overseen the CEV’s expansion from 28 member organisations to 78.
To help communication and the exchange of ideas between these organisations, the CEV recently set up an online community tool, which Held calls “a Facebook for volunteer managers”. At the click of a mouse, it allows users to find out, for example, about opportunities for youth volunteering or how to go about finding volunteer work in a Slovenian hospital. Admittedly, it has not quite got the following of Facebook yet, as it has only about 100 registered users, but Held is optimistic that as members get used to the idea, more people will sign up.
As well as its policy work, the CEV has helped organise projects such as Involve, aimed at integrating migrants into society through volunteering, and Think Future, Volunteer Together, focused on people over 55 and highlighting how this age group can contribute to society through volunteering.
Projects and membership fees generate some of the centre’s funding, but the vast majority comes from the European Commission’s Europe for Citizens programme.
Volunteering is definitely a matter of European interest, Held believes. “It is a very hands-on way of living European values and translating them into practice, day after day, rather than having them only standing as solemn words in the treaties,” he says.
Europeans of all sorts – regardless of nationality, social group or ethnic group – can and do volunteer. “Whether a person is Estonian, a student or unemployed makes no difference,” he says. “They want to get involved.”
It is that kind of spirit that Held hopes will be encouraged during the Year of Volunteering.
Anna Jenkinson is a freelance journalist based in Brussels.
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