The Volunteer Centre
Civic association in Ústí nad Labem
Prokopa Diviše 1605/5
400 01 Ústí nad Labem
Czech Republic
Telephone / fax: + 420 47 521 66 84

What is our mission:
The mission of the Volunteer Centre is to promote and support the idea of volunteering, and to encourage citizens to participate in volunteer activities. Our organisation was established at the end of 1999. Our team has at the moment seven members.

What do we do?
We organize recruiting, training and further education of volunteers. We give lectures on volunteering and implement our own volunteer programmes involving volunteers into services provided directly to clients who are in need of care, e.g. children and young people, senior citizens etc. To fulfill our mission, we co-operate with the Municipal Council of Ústí nad Labem, state institutions, organisations providing services, and NGOs. We initiate and support new types of grass-root volunteer activities.
Our premises include one office, a clubroom for children and young people, and a community room used for meetings with various groups.

Our projects and programs :

- The Program of Volunteering Development, which is aimed at providing support to the organisations working with volunteers or planning to involve volunteers into their activities (Discussion Clubs for the organisations´ representatives, consultations for individuals), recruiting of volunteers and matching them up with individual organisations.

· The preventive leisure time 5 P Programme (Czech version of the BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS programme) for socially handicapped children and young people from 8 to 15 years of age. In this programme, a trained volunteer works with one child during one afternoon every week at least one year round.

· The For Seniors Volunteer Programme is aimed at the care provided to senior citizens by volunteers, especially in nursing homes.
· The Volunteer Programme for the Unemployed, which we have been implementing for two years in co-operation with the local Labour Office, the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, and HESTIA - the National Volunteer Centre, Prague.

· The Volunteers in Hospitals Programme, which we have been implementing in co-operation with the Sanatorium for Long-term Ill People in Ryjice.

· The Civic Virtues Development Programme - Volunteering and Philanthropy of Children and Young People, which is aimed at educating high school students in volunteering and providing them with hands-on experience in this area.

· "2001 - the Year of Volunteers" Project - through this project we have joined the celebrations of the International Year of Volunteers announced by the UN. Its goal is to address the general public by activities, articles published in newspapers, and other events promoting volunteering and our Volunteer Centre.

We are a member of:

Our organisation is a member of the Coalition ofVolunteer Initiatives in the Czech Republic. We have been co-operating with HESTIA - the National Volunteer Centre, Prague. We have participated in several conferences aimed at the development of volunteering and philanthropy in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (the BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS Conference held in Budapest on 7-10 May 1999, the VoluntEurope Conference held in Prague on 13-16 October 2000, and the Restoration of Civic Virtues - Volunteering and Philanthropy, the conference held in Kroměříž on 7-9 June 2001).