Lithuanian Kolping Society organised conference on volunteering

On the 14th of November 2008, the Lithuanian Kolping Society organised the conference „Volunteering teaches us to Be Tolerant“ in order to commemorate the International Tolerance Day and the European development days.

The goal of the conference was to introduce people to the possibilities of volunteering in developing countries, to foster discussion on tolerance and its lack in Lithuanian society. With this event, the Lithuanian Kolping Society also wanted to gain publicity for the European Development Days that took place in Stasbourg on November 15-17.

In the morning of the conference, young people near the Kolping house distributed several hundreds of special badges to the passers-by in order to draw their attention to the subject. The participants of the conference listened to the presentations about tolerance and development education as well as to information about the GLEN programme and presentations prepared by volunteers. Augustas Kligys and Dovile Sinkuniene shared their personal experience of volunteering in Africa, Ethiopia. At the end of the conference the participants actively discussed in groups.

Since 2005 the Lithuanian Kolping society has been partner of GLEN in Lithuania. GLEN (http://www.glen-europe.org/) is a global education network for young Europeans that consists of nongovernmental organizations from 12 European Union countries: Austria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Malta, France, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary and Germany. Through this project, every year several young people go as volunteers to developing countries.

For several years, the Lithuanian Kolping society has been organizing seminars and conferences in the field of development cooperation and education as well as volunteering. Many people of different age, different professions and from different parts of Lithuania have already participated in these events. The recent conference was supported by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and InWEnt.

For more information, please contact Lina Kalibataitė, National Secretary of Lithuanian Kolping Society, lina.kalibataite@kolping.lt

Information provided by Ruta Kazlauskaite, Lithuanian Kolping Society