A Central Pillar of Caritas’s Work
Many people are willing to do volunteer work in Germany. Nationwide, more than a half-a-million people volunteer for Caritas
alone.
More and more people search the Internet for ways to help. For them, Caritas offers an online notice board for volunteer placements
in Germany.
www.caritas-ehrenamt.de
Here you find the Volunteer-Centres of Caritas (only german)
Civic Involvement to Promote Social Solidarity
Caritas supports and strengthens the work of volunteers in its centres and institutions and also establishes corporate citizenship projects. This is why the German Caritas Association is a highly-qualified, long-term partner for businesses who want to become more involved in the social and charity sector.
The German Caritas Association launched its own corporate citizenship project in July 2006. This project allows Caritas Germany to cooperate more efficiently with businesses. Its areas of focus are the professionalisation, networking and further training of volunteers in cooperation with the Professional Further Education Academy of the German Caritas in Freiburg.
The Volunteer Centres of Caritas
Volunteering and civic involvement are promoted by the Network of Volunteers in local Caritas Conferences and nationwide by the Volunteer Centres of Caritas in Germany. These organisations actively work to foster social solidarity. For the last decade, they have been advising people who want to volunteer and have helped them to find placements as charity workers. They also provide organisations with information about how they can effectively organise and employ their volunteers.
The Volunteer Centres conduct projects with schoolchildren and students and inform young people about voluntary work in Germany and abroad. They also advise businesses about corporate citizenship and participate in the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs’ pilot programme Generationsübergreifende Freiwilligendienste (‘Bridging the Generation Gap in Voluntary Services’) as well as in the Partnership campaign of the Aktion Mensch charity, which supports people with disabilities.
Source: The 2007 Annual Report of the German Caritas Association