The Volunteer Center of Resita is an NGO that started in 2004 as a project for a public-private partnership between local NGOs and the municipality of Resita, a small industrial town located in the South-West region of Romania. It came to answer the needs of participation, cultural and leisure activities and non-formal education opportunities that were registered in the local community.

The Volunteer Center plays an intermediary role between the volunteer needs of organizations in Resita and youth’s desire and availability for volunteering in the community. At the same time, the centre is supporting and promoting the recognition of the value of volunteering within the community. Thus, our objectives are the promotion of nonformal youth education through volunteer work and supporting the NGOs capacity to offer volunteer services in the community.

The centre gathers and manages the both local volunteer resources and initiates its own activities or supports the initiatives of the volunteers. Thus, the Volunteer Centre from Resita gathers young people involved in activities from different domains, social, environmental, culture, leisure, sport, etc.

Our projects include training volunteers as youth animators, participating in international youth exchanges, the celebration of the European Car Free Day on September 22nd, photography contests, ecological projects, creative workshops, information campaigns, all involving youth that come from a geographically and economically disadvantaged area.

We also conducted a research on volunteerism, locally, nationally and internationally. This activity developed within the framework of the volunteer training part of our activity, but had a precise focus on developing material for a book on volunteerism. The fruit of the research we conducted was a book called Carte despre Voluntariat (Book about volunteering), a book that it is one of the very few books written in Romanian about volunteerism, which makes our work even more pioneering-like.

The Centre is fully managed and functions by the volunteer work of its coordinating team.