The non-profit organisation Castrum Sancti Georgii has been restoring the ruins of Biely Kameň castle since 2021. (source: Courtesy of Castrum Sancti Georgii )
There are various ways people can start volunteering. But what all volunteers can share is a feeling of fulfilment and reward.
“Volunteering is a combination of something pleasant and useful,” Veronika Jirku from Banská Bystrica said when sharing her path to volunteering with The Slovak Spectator.
She noted that each volunteer needs to find their own volunteering activity, one that interests them. “Some don’t want to meet other people, and some people prefer to walk dogs, others prefer to paint the fence, so everybody needs to find their own thing that interests them.”
Giving back for the sake of future generations
Naše Mesto (Our Town)
Naše Mesto – ‘Our Town’ in English – is the largest corporate volunteering event in central Europe. This year the event will take place in Slovakia on Friday, June 7. Organised by the Pontis Foundation for the eighteenth time, hundreds of volunteers wearing white “I Have My Heart in the Right Town” T-shirts will help NGOs, schools, kindergartens and centres that provide social care. For instance, they will clean up nature and community centres, restore castles and other monuments, and spend time with the residents of various social service facilities.
Monika Winczerová, a native of the town of Svätý Jur, close to Bratislava, began volunteering some 16 years ago. At the time, she was responding to an offer from her then employer in Bratislava to join Naše Mesto, the largest corporate volunteering event. She and her colleagues collected rubbish in the municipal forests in Bratislava. It appealed to her so much that she began organising volunteering activities for her colleagues beyond the event.
“We first cleaned all the tourist trails in the Small Carpathians around Bratislava,” she said. Afterwards, they advanced towards Svätý Jur, Marianka, Borinka, and Limbach – all the way up to Pezinská Baba, a recreational resort.
