Caritas Malta Director Mgr. Victor Grech has made a call to young people to dedicate one year of their life to voluntary work in the community.

Addressing a recent seminar on Social Volunteering organised by Caritas Malta, he said that young people should not be afraid of their limitations or fragility, as no voluntary participation was too small, feeble or poor to be of service.

He said that the drama at the core of our humanity is about our reluctance to be human. Being human means accepting our fragility and our failures, and discovering the joy of giving with a whole heart and a free mind.

Referring to social volunteering in Church organisations, Mgr. Grech said that it is opportune for the Church in Malta to create a databank of volunteers working in the social field, and to make an audit of the real needs of families and individuals who come in contact with Church organizations so that the recruitment of new volunteers would be more specific and the training given to them would be more adequate to the new needs of persons with special needs.

He recommended that better use is made of services offered by volunteers who have a profession and who are 62 years old and over. On an another plane, in some countries, children from the age of eight to 12 years were being encouraged to participate in various projects so as to strengthen inter-generational relationships.

Referring to volunteering in the EU, Mgr. Grech said that the European Social Fund has long recognised voluntary activity as a positive outcome especially for disadvantaged groups, but the European Union’s emphasis on market-led economic growth may underplay the richness and breath of volunteering. More effective use could be made of the European Social Fund so as to give more opportunity to volunteer activities which promote integration into the labour market.

The seminar was also addressed by Mr. Robert Farrugia, Chairperson of the Maltese Council for Volunteering; Mr. Joe Gerada, CEO of the Foundation for Human Resources Development; Dr. Damian Spiteri, Senior Lecture, MCAST and Social Worker, Caritas Malta; Mr. Dominic Verhoeven, Director of Caritas Belgium and Vice-President of Caritas Internationalis Belgium, the Hon. Dolores Cristina, Minister for Education, Employment and the Family, and H.G. the Archbishop, Mgr. Paul Cremona, O.P.

Mr. Leonid McKay, Caritas Malta, was moderator.

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