January 13, 2010
IAVE Youth Office in Catalonia presentation at the Youth Forum of the 20th IAVE World Volunteer Conf
Lluc Marti’s presentation to the youth forum 2008/4/3
The IAVE Youth Office in Catalonia gives a voice and power to the young generation, and calls to the attention the means we have in our society to improve the world, helping everyone play a role in creating a more inclusive society. Our vision is to build a world where all young people have the chance to devote their energy and time to volunteer action. the mission is the build up a new concept of youth volunteering which involves thinking not only of youth volunteering as a way to change and transform our communities but also as an opportunity to be active citizens because we believe volunteering is the best way to practice and develop civic values, and personal development.
My name is Lluc Marti, and I’m the director of the youth office. Our objectives are to promote communication with a view to establish joint proposals, volunteer actions lead by young people, research and features of youth volunteering worldwide. Being an IAVE structure we are collecting knowledge among IAVE members who are doing very different things in different fields. We want this information to be better known, so we know what’s going on in youth volunteering worldwide.
We also support campaigns at the global and local level. We want to help create new spaces for everyone to improve their work and facilitate the way to achieve what they want.
The other objectives are to encourage new synergies and ways of collaboration, and following up the collaboration. For example, from the IAVE youth conference there are many new proposals and partnerships, which we want to facilitate as much as we can, not only with IAVE members but other structures that assemble under the umbrella of IAVE.
The IAVE youth office is being officially presented now, but during the last few months we already have a Y-IAVE which we are sending to members in four languages. We have a youth section in the IAVE website which has ideas for future collaboration, so we suggest you check that from time to time. We have a strong database in the field of volunteering. But of course, being an IAVE structure it depends on IAVE members. You can help us in many ways. You can come to the beautiful city of Barcelona and volunteer for us, but you can also volunteer wherever you are through the internet. That’s one of the things that’s going to make the IAVE youth office very good for all of us. I’d like to give special thanks to Carlos Roca who until two days ago was a youth board member for IAVE, and former president Liz Burns, and last but not least the Catalonian government who have supported the office for the long term. Three departments are supporting the office, which shows how strongly they believe in IAVE and are supporting the office.
