From Skopje to Singapore – social entrepreneurship, volunteering and why young people need us

On September 7, the ARNO team was part of the final event of the “Initiative to Support the Development of Volunteer Programs for CSOs” project of the Peace Corps. The goal of this project was to work with organizations that, through the provided training and mentoring, need to establish their own or strengthen existing volunteer programs. Simona Slavkova participated in the trainings on behalf of ARNO. At the final event that took place on 07.09 in Public Room – Skopje, Simona presented part of our activities related to volunteering and the successes of our volunteers.

“Volunteering can really make positive changes in someone’s life, and the story of our volunteer Milijana is a confirmation of that.” After I started working at ARNO, I had the opportunity to meet Milijana, a student at SUGS “Rade Jovchevski Korchagin”, who volunteered at the SEED project. As part of her volunteering, she managed the project’s website, participated in all trainings, and had additional tasks from our team. Miliana conveyed all her experiences of social entrepreneurship in the essay with which she applied for a two-year exchange scholarship at the United World Colleges in Southwest Asia (Singapore). She told us that it was the project and volunteering that inspired her to take this step. It pleasantly surprised us. This is how volunteering can take someone from Skopje to Singapore, and make someone happy and motivate them even more to work with volunteers.” – said Simona Slavkova, project assistant at ARNO.

ARNO thanks the organizers and believes that such trainings enable the establishment of better volunteer programs through which the organizations would offer young people opportunities to engage in volunteer work.