ESC: Individual volunteering in cultural, youth and environmental projects

Pekarna Magdalenske mreže is a non-governmental, non-profit institution, founded in 1997 as an organisation for encouraging and supporting programme and project cooperation among individuals and groups conducting artistic, cultural, educational, research, ecological, informative and humanitarian activities as well as for granting assistance in solving their short or long-term residential needs for creative spaces. Our organization is one of the leading cultural producers in the complex of Cultural centre Pekarna, as well as in the city of Maribor, with focus on independent, 'alternative', under-represented forms of art, culture and youth programmes. All of our programmes are declared »Programmes in Public Interest« by the Municipality of Maribor and Slovene Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Education, Science and Sport. Pekarna Magdalenske mreže provides the public with more than 250 events in the domains of culture and youth per year. We are a member of CNVOS (Centre of Non-Governmental Organisations of Slovenia) and Trans Europe Halles (European network of independent cultural centres). Programme-wise our organization works in three main areas: independent culture, youth programmes and civil society. Our cultural programme includes organisation, co-organisation, promotion and realization of non-profit cultural events, mainly from the fields of visual arts, films, photography, theatre, which find it harder to gain recognition within the established environment and are actually shaping the distinct programme image of the Cultural Centre Pekarna, paying special attention to the idea and message behind them. We are also the home of Aunt Rosa Library, library with radical and critically engaged literature. We should also mention our International stop motion film festival StopTrik and artist in residency platform GuestRoomMaribor. Within the institution, the Youth Informative-Counselling Centre INFOPEKA is active in providing the public with the youth programmes. Its basic activity is providing free information, counselling and non-formal education programmes for the young, aged between 15 and 29 (children, students, employed and unemployed young people) and for all, who live and work with them and to the interested public (teachers, parents, counsellors, youth-workers …), with the focus on volunteer and community work. Important part of the programme is also Critical Literacy education for high school students and youth workers. In the field of volunteer work, INFOPEKA is a local coordinator of a network »Volunteer Work in Maribor«, a network of 74 organisations from Maribor, which provide organized volunteer programmes. We have been organizing volunteer programmes for young volunteers for fourteen years now. The programmes, which our volunteers are working on, are providing free instructions for pupils, weekly educational and creative workshops with children with fewer opportunities, different informational initiatives, creative writing sessions for elementary school pupils, in the form of active citizenship youth projects/initiatives and different prevention workshops for school-children. We also provide technical, organisational and service support to interested producers of programmes and projects, not only to regular active users of the premises, but also to other interested users with their own programme schemes and to a variable number of external organizers of cultural, educational activist and other events. We have been an EVS (from 2020 ESE) hosting and sending organisation from 2004 onward and have since hosted 41 and sent abroad 34 volunteers. We try to include ESE volunteers in all organisation’s activities, that seem interesting to them or that they want to learn, and we actively encourage them in creating and performing their own projects. Volunteers actively participate in creating cultural, art, youth, informative, social and civic activities, and through their work also promote ESEE among young people in our environment. Through their activities and living they gain the feeling of belonging to organisation as well as belonging to community and local environment, they grow personally, spread and develop their fields of interest, and also continually learn during the process. Among many things volunteers learn the strategies and techniques of self-organising and planning cultural, youth and other events, and gain the required abilities to work in a group of people with different cultural and social backgrounds. During that process they learn about the projects and workings of non-government, non-profit organisation and perform publicly renowned projects in the fields of culture, art, music and activism. Each ESE volunteer is precious to a hosting organisation because they bring variety, novelty, fresh perspective, experience and knowledge to a new working environment.