The European Solidarity Corps is a European Union is a program that provides opportunities for learning, personal growth, and development, especially oriented to people with fewer opportunities who do not get to enjoy other opportunities offered by European programs.
In our opinion the European Solidarity Corps is the program that offers opportunities to those young people who do not have opportunities without distinguishing cultural backgrounds, religions, cultural identities, etc., it is the program that tries to unite young Europeans who have fewer options to live the values of the European Union – the European Solidarity Corps.
This program encourages and facilitates that young people with little or no economic resources have the possibility to share their time, culture, energy, solidarity, and motivation with young people from other European countries through voluntary actions financed with funds from the European Union.
The value of this program lies in the fact of giving this valuable opportunity to young people who for different aspects of life have not been able to enjoy international mobility experiences and therefore the entities have a little obligation to promote and increase the options for the development of our international volunteering projects inviting these young people to be the main actors.
It is a value for any non-profit organization with social purposes to offer the opportunity to even young people with low resources to live the experience of an international mobility – the values that we receive from the experiences of these young people are incalculable – it is above the balance of income and expenses of our organizations and above all it is a vital transforming element in the lives of these young people – this program, under its objectives and values, offers the opportunity for these young people to live the experience of an international mobility.
This program under its objectives and values offers personal growth to the young people who participate in it, helps the empowerment of its participants, develops intercultural bonds, and promotes the development of personal skills and competences through a unique experience in life that will change the person who develops it.
We entities should be self-critical about the selection processes that we carry out in our projects to welcome volunteers. On many occasions we are dazzled by great curricula, great language skills and great experience in the field of our activities, but we forget that the values and principles of this program are aimed at giving opportunities to those who have not lived it.
It is being very common for this program to focus and offer its volunteer action places to young people with great experience and who have even lived several experiences of mobility programs to this type of entities that are taking these profiles, we invite you to reflect and analyze whether the volunteer action they develop is designed for the development of the volunteer or for the benefit of the entity which welcomes these profiles under the concept of volunteering but perhaps they are developing an internship or employment program in disguise.
Therefore, we believe it is necessary that there is a deep reflection on the participation and the selection that we, as host entities, make of volunteers in our projects of the solidarity corps.
