- The UVic Volunteer Office opened two years ago to offer the university community the opportunity to train and collaborate in various volunteer projects
- The University already has its own coexistence programme and a growing range of proposals in agreement with entities to offer students the widest possible variety of options.
The University of Vic - Central University of Catalonia (UVic-UCC) has always made its training model a key element. Following the values and mission of the institution, this model places the student as the centre and driving force of their learning. It is a training model that aims to guarantee personal growth and full incorporation into the professional world, by supporting students throughout the training process.
In addition to its own teaching and research functions, the University wants to become an ideal framework so that its members can grow and become citizens of the world who are sensitive to the environment around them. A space that, in addition to helping them to learn and prepare for the future, is also the ideal framework for them to develop not only friendships, contacts and personal and collective projects, but also skills and competencies that show a new way of seeing the world to live in it with greater solidarity. According to the Vice-Rector for Teaching Staff, Albert Juncà, “by offering the opportunity to train in volunteering, the University shows its commitment to the territory, and is involved in a more ethical and social way, contributing to the promotion of indispensable values such as solidarity, equity and social justice.”
That is why two years ago, UVic, through UHub, the University Community Service, launched the Volunteer Office, to offer cross-cutting skills that help everyone who wants to train as an active, socially responsible citizen. “Although we created the office because many students had been asking for it for a long time, it was a bit of a rough start,” says its manager, Elisabet Fernàndez, “because we had to close it just after opening, because of the pandemic.” However, two years later, the office has begun to gain momentum and already has eighty people enrolled in volunteer programmes, twenty collaborating entities, and is open to signing agreements with organizations that need it “because we want to have as varied an offer as possible so that all students can find the volunteering programme that best suits their interests,” said Fernández.
«By offering the opportunity to train in volunteering, the University also shows its commitment to the territory, and is involved in a more ethical and social way.»
First, you need to train
Volunteering basically means wanting to spend some of your free time doing an activity that serves others or the community in general. But to access the UVic volunteer programme, you must first take a course on Volunteering and Service Learning. According to Elisabet Fernàndez, “it is very important that before students start volunteering, they know what it means and what their rights and duties are. This initial reflection before starting is necessary for all this to be a great experience.”
The Volunteer and Service Learning courses that the Volunteer Office programmes twice a year consist of sixteen sessions that combine theory and practical activities. In this way, the ability to show empathy can be worked on, which, according to Fernández, “is, together with personal commitment, one of the main qualities that anyone who wants to volunteer must have.” The course is completed by some talks with professionals from the collaborating entities and with experienced volunteers. In addition to the personal satisfaction of learning while doing a service, the training acquired and the set of hours dedicated to volunteering can be recognized as RAC credits for participation in volunteer or cooperation activities.
Programmes of all kinds
UVic currently has a coexistence programme, which is its first volunteer programme and is just in the pilot phase. This programme, which is supported by “La Caixa” Foundation, is based on young people with functional diversity living with university students in a flat and, in this way, gaining independence from home while learning to take responsibility for own decisions, so that in the future they can choose where they want to live and with whom.
The other volunteer programmes in which students can collaborate are the result of agreements with local organizations that provide social services. The Germina Foundation, Càritas Diocesana of Vic, Aurora Gestió de Projectes Socials and the Llar Juvenil are some of the names on a growing list. Students taking bachelor’s degrees in health and education are those who tend to volunteer the most, even though volunteers can be found from all disciplines.
The most common volunteering options are to support vulnerable people, provide school support, accompany people with disabilities in mobility activities, help with summer camps, provide logistical support in a social canteen, repair bicycles, collaborate in a non-competitive football school or help people to find a job or write a CV, among other activities.
Learning from others
Núria Soler is a third-year double degree student in Early Childhood and Primary Education with a major in English. The pandemic and lockdown occurred in her first academic year and she saw in volunteering “an opportunity to get to know new places and people, and have experiences that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.” She signed up to volunteer in three institutions: at the Casal Claret in Vic, which works with disadvantaged groups; the Associació Sant Tomàs, a social initiative that works to improve the quality of life of people with intellectual disabilities or developmental problems; and Voluntariat per la Llengua, a programme to help learn Catalan through conversation. “It happened by chance. One day, when I was leaving class, I went past the Miramarges courtyard and saw a space where various institutions from the Osona region were presenting their projects and looking for volunteers who were interested in joining,” she said. She did not make the choice of programme randomly because “volunteering had to meet two requirements: the first, that it fit in with my study schedules, as I did not want to commit to something that I knew I could not do and, secondly, I wanted to work with people.” In the case of the three institutions she selected, both criteria were met.
Soler stated that volunteering has brought her many things: "It helps me learn from others and empathize with their experiences, and gain new strategies in the teaching-learning process that I know I will end up using sooner or later in my professional career." She also said that volunteers had opened the door for her to learn new ways of living, thinking and doing. That's why she thinks anyone who is interested should try it: “Spending a few hours a week on something that allows you to find out about new places and meet people provides very rewarding experiences, and it's well worth it,” she concluded.
Volunteering at UManresa
UManresa encourages the participation of its students in voluntary socio-educational or cultural activities. There are currently three programmes underway: one in the educational field, another in the social field, and a third in the linguistic-cultural field. In the education volunteering programme, students carry out teaching support tasks in schools, especially those defined as learning communities, or support organizations that provide school reinforcement activities for low-income children. In the social volunteering programme, the participants provide support for people who have difficulty acting independently in their daily lives. Finally, in collaboration with secondary schools, students of French origin are offered the opportunity to get involved in the dialogue programme between French and Catalan culture. Participants hold conversation sessions with young teenagers in which French is the tool for connecting people from different cultures.
In two years and with a pandemic in the middle, the Volunteer Office has eighty people enrolled in different programmes and already has twenty collaborating entities.
The Manresa Campus recognizes the dedication of these students in socio-cultural and educational activities with RAC credits. Students obtain RAC credits for carrying out university activities that are not part of their curriculum, that complement or enrich their training in other cross-cutting areas of their degree, and that are specified in volunteer proposals. Up to a maximum of six ECTS credits can be recognized throughout the course of a university degree. During the 2020-2021 academic year, marked by limitations due to the pandemic, the education volunteering programme had three students; the social volunteering programme had eight; and the programme of dialogues between French and Catalan culture had thirty students.