LITHUANIA: "VoluntYear" initiative
The very general initiative in Lithuania was a Year of Volunteering called VOLUNTYEAR 2015 – initiative of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, officially announced by the Dean of the Faculty at the very beginning of the new academic year at the Kaunas University of Technology, and with a very engaging professor’s speech about volunteering. The VOLUNTYEAR initiative comprised a lot of different volunteering initiatives that were developed and implemented with students and professors, voluntary and other non-governmental organisations, public institutions during the whole academic 2015/2016 year. Most activities took place at the Faculty in Kaunas City, several were also established outside the Faculty.
This project was a very good opportunity to make input and spread the idea of volunteerism engaging Faculty academicians, inviting non-active students and volunteers, spreading information widely about good works done, and providing a platform for organisations involving volunteers to present their initiatives and attract new volunteers.
It was decided to initiate numerous attractive voluntary initiatives, involving academic members. Faculty academicians were quite new at the development and implementation of voluntary initiatives at the Faculty, but several did that with engagement and personal and academic interest.
Many initiatives were developed and implemented during VOLUNTYEAR year, especially targeting at the whole period of Fall semester. Faculty students and other Faculty members had possibility to find out everything about volunteering and join social activities for those willing to volunteer but not knowing where to start from:
- Volunteers engaging professor’s speech and discussion at the very beginning of academic year, on 02/09/2015, for students and other Faculty members;
- On 14/10/2015 with a Civic Engagement Fair and a small conference where the participants of “Mission Sibiras” talked about their experience. In addition, assoc. professor Thomas A. Bryer, director of Center for Public and Nonprofit Management, University of Central Florida (USA) held a lecture of his own experience in volunteering. Participants had a chance not only to join the conference but also visit the volunteering fair and get to know about different organizations of volunteering (more about the event - Event No. 04).
- On the World Kindness Day (November 13), an initiative “Mission of Kindness” was announced inviting volunteers to share their stories on social media of the Faculty making their kindness spread. Active volunteers were interviewed and their stories were made public at different social media channels of the Faculty. The “Mission of Kindness” was ended with the celebration on December 7th at the “VeGandhi” event. Students volunteers shared their stories and were rewarded;
- On 17/11/2015, lovers of good movies were be able to spend an afternoon with movies, discussions and share about volunteering.
- “VeGandhi”, on 07/12/2015, an initiative of the Faculty professor, and was the first study day on veganism and vegetarianism in the academic history of Lithuania. This one-day symposium, named after the great Indian leader, focused on volunteering activities for animal rights and welfare, with a special emphasis on vegan/vegetarian lifestyles. Famous Lithuanian singers and song-writers, business people, voluntary managers and volunteers joined and shared their own experience and life-changing choices. The event was organised in the occasion of the International Volunteer Day;
- Annual volunteer initiatives were implemented, too. These are: social activity of two faculties at the stray animals shelter "Penkta koja" („Fifth Leg“) with the aim to contribute to stray animal shelters welfare cleaning its environment; donate backpack for children, donate warm socks to the elderly, etc.
A very special initiative developed and executed by Faculty professors was when two departments joined forces for common project about volunteering. Media and public administration students were encouraged to create short movies about NGOs and volunteering environments in Kaunas/Lithuania, in teams from both educational programs. Public administration students were responsible for the contents of the movies, film study course students were responsible for the technical part. Short movies were made as exam. That was a challenging and a very interesting experiment for course professors.
Facebook event of the VoluntYear initiative: >>>
POSTER of the VOLUNTYEAR initiative >>>
