The United Nations Department of Global Communications (DGC) promotes global awareness and paintings of the United Nations through its network paintings of United Nations Information Centres (UNICs) around the world. The United Nations Regional Information Centre (UNRIC) in Brussels reaches local audiences in 21 countries, as well as in the Sacred Sea and European institutions.
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, volunteers have shown exceptional solidarity around the world. Responding to requests for assistance from their local communities, they are heroes.
“Volunteers help vulnerable groups, misinform, teach children, provide essential facilities for other older people and frontline physical workers,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on International Volunteer Day on December 5.
A wave of solidarity has spread across Europe, and has been added to France, where the Tous Volontaires platform saw the number of registrations double in 2020, with 40,000 new volunteers. Coming from a wide variety of backgrounds, volunteers responded to needs: from helping the elderly to accompanying the disabled, immigrants, schoolchildren and organizing food banks.
“This is one of the few positive effects of Covid-19,” explains Isabelle Persoz, president of Tous Bénévoles. “More and more young people are signing up and joining volunteering,” he adds. A is committed to them.
The International Committee of the Red Cross confirms the promotion, with thousands of new volunteers worldwide, adding 48,000 new registrations in the Netherlands and 60,000 in Italy.
“We don’t have to respond to [all] donations from external volunteers we receive,” says Natacha Dewitte, deputy director of human resources for the Red Cross in French-speaking Belgium.
Thanks to the influx of volunteers, the Red Cross has been able to carry out its humanitarian and social efforts and the classification of patients in front of hospitals and testing centres. The organization even won an unprecedented bid from a film production and casting company that helped establish a food distribution center.
The volunteers who mobilized to help in the pandemic have been a beacon of disinterest and optimism.
Valérie Verbelen, 50, has been a Red Cross boxing volunteer in Belgium since March 2019. Trained in first aid, she did not hesitate for a moment to lend a hand to hospitals. “It felt vital to give my time,” she told UNRIC. However, some paradoxes remain difficult to overcome. “We usually get close to people, but now we are forced to keep our distance to protect them and ourselves. “
Belgian medical student Andrea Dehaene, 22, volunteers at a testing center for asymptomatic patients at Ghent University Hospital. He doesn’t regret it at the same time,” he says.
These inspiring efforts are admirable. ” Volunteers make a great contribution to society at a very low cost,” says Joost van Alkemade, director and community leader of the Association of Dutch Voluntary Organizations (NOV).
However, the pandemic has also had the opposite effect: some older people, that is, at risk, have been denied the opportunity to be on the ground for health reasons. The French Red Cross lost 11,000 volunteers over the age of 60 in one day. those volunteers, it is difficult not to be there in the user because volunteering is a way to recover some social contact, “says Isabelle Persoz.
This impediment did not prevent Amédéo Miceli, 64, president of the Red Cross center in La Louvière, Belgium. The center, which distributes emergency packages and supplies emergency food, hit at the beginning of the pandemic.
“In the first wave, the number of urgent requests for food aid skyrocketed, increasing from two hundred to three hundred percent in just a few months,” says Miceli, who has not been intimidated by fatigue or the virus. on the floor since March I’m not afraid. . . It’s exhausting, but you can’t leave, you can’t turn your back.
With the continuing economic consequences of the crisis, the need for volunteers will disappear. Food banks, for example, anticipate a massive backlog of food assistance applications.
“Anyone can volunteer. First of all, we want goodwill: each and every act has value,” concludes Isabelle Persoz.
The Manguinhos Ballet, named after its favela in Rio de Janeiro, returns to the level after a long absence due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It has as interpreters 250 young people and adolescents from the favela. The ballet organization provides social assistance in a network where poverty, hunger and teenage pregnancy are ongoing problems.
The pandemic has put many other people to the test, and news hounds are no exception. The coronavirus has waged war not only against the lives and well-being of others, but has also generated countless deceptions and clinical lies.
The pandemic has shown how vital it is that the right of access to data is reliable and that reliable and accurate data is freely available for government and citizen decision-making – a win-win situation.