For the 26th consecutive year, the so-called National Volunteer Week will take place across Slovenia. Its purpose is to celebrate volunteering and express gratitude to volunteers for their contributions. Volunteer organizations will present their activities to the public through various events and invite visitors to join their ranks.
This year, the extended version of National Volunteer Week will once again be brought to Koper, offering organizations a wide range of activities through which they can present themselves to the broader public. The main event remains the so-called Happy Day of Volunteering (HDV), a kind of volunteer festival, which will – reportedly with a record number of participating organizations for our region – take place at the Koper city market on Wednesday, May 21st, between 3:00 PM and 7:00 PM.
This year, the organizers also aim to expand the Happy Day of Volunteering into something more and fully leverage National Volunteer Week for various forms of promotion, the exchange of best practices, networking, and mutual acquaintance. Thus, on May 19th, National Volunteer Week will open with a round table discussion titled “Public, for the Common Good”, which will be held in the main hall of the Regional Museum of Koper from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM.
For the first time, they will also introduce so-called Harbor Paths – a type of guided tour through humanitarian and other volunteer organizations. These have been symbolically named “harbors” (currently limited to the city center of Koper, but with information also provided about organizations operating in the Koper hinterland and beyond). These tours will allow individuals and other interested members of the public to get to know their neighbors, the places they’ve walked past countless times, perhaps wondering, “What do these people actually do here?” In this way, the initiative aims to raise awareness of these organizations and educate the public about an infrastructure that is readily accessible to everyone – one whose staff will never turn anyone away.