Topic: A legal status for volunteers: facilitating engagement and mobility (visas)

Once I asked a volunteer abroad about what it meant to be a volunteer?

"To be a volunteer? It is not easy to explain?: For example, when applying for my residence permit, the man in the Prefecture told me: 'You are neither a worker, nor a student, or an Au Pair; a volunteer doesn't exist!' I had to go there three times with at least one hour to wait. Finally I had my residence permit. I was happy. However, the only problem was that it was the wrong one: after all the discussions they gave me a residence permit for workers. But I'm a volunteer! I didn't go back because I was fed up with the Prefecture. I hope that me and my organisation will not be checked".

This girl was lucky. Many other young people willing to contribute with their skills and powerful motivation to volunteering abroad could never join their programmes. They did not get their visa. The government of the host country rejected his petition arguing that they were neither supported by a study programme or a work contract.

It is in the agenda of international institutions and organisations, such as the European Commission and the Council of Europe, UNESCO and UNV, and a key issue within the IYV'2001 Joint Campaign, to urge national governments to promote pro-volunteer policies and remove legal obstacles to volunteering either in-country and abroad. Only national governments can do it!

Your contribution is thus very important. Governments will better understand the position of volunteers by means of concrete examples.

Do you identify with these cases?

Have you or someone that you know ever been stopped from volunteering because of any kind of legal or administrative obstacle (visa, residence or work permits, social security or heath insurance covering, taxes, lack of recognition of your voluntary service) ?

We will specifically use the visa-issue as a focus point for mobility of volunteers. How will we do this? For the year 2001, we will keep a "Visa Blackbook" in which we will collect all cases where volunteers have been refused participation in voluntary service due to visa problems. In case you know of a volunteer being refused a visa, please send the story to sciint@sciint.org. We will guarantee personal anonymity. Further, during one Action Week in August, international volunteers will undertake street-action to promote the creation of a new category of visa: the Volunteer Visa!

Send us your testimonies, pictures, express yourself by means of a poem? Be as creative as you wish!

We will be glad to receive your contribution at: avso@bigfoot.com

2001 is the year of volunteers and we will make our voice be heard.

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