Strengthening and transforming the community through volunteering
People experiencing fragility, vulnerability, or loneliness need support that connects them to their community and ensures they can develop a life plan and participate in society. Volunteering plays a crucial role here, involving going out into the community and working collaboratively with organizations, associations, and government agencies.
Volunteering is a form of solidarity committed to building a more just society , a way of finding our place in life and relating to everything around us. With this goal in mind, it must engage with the community to strengthen and transform it, fostering the participation of an engaged citizenry in which no one is excluded.
The community intervention of the San Juan de Dios volunteer program
In recent years, the San Juan de Dios volunteer network has been implementing various community support initiatives. This work is carried out through a network, emphasizing collaborative and shared responsibility with other local organizations, and prioritizing projects that address unwanted loneliness.
With this objective, and being especially sensitive to emerging needs , volunteers face the challenge of "leaving the centers" and supporting vulnerable individuals in their own communities, neighborhoods, and homes, as part of their recovery process . To this end, community intervention initiatives have been developed in the various centers, both in homes and through group sessions in the community.
Volunteering in the prevention and support of older people
At the Sant Joan de Déu Health Park, specifically, community-based volunteer projects combine individual support with group sessions that foster mutual support, emotional expression, and the building of relationships . This work is developed through a model based on stable partnerships with social organizations, municipal services, and community resources in the area. The co-management of activities allows for the shared identification of needs and the coordination of more humane and personalized responses.
Volunteering faces the challenge of "leaving the centers" and accompanying vulnerable people in their environment, in their neighborhood, in their home, as part of their recovery process.
To carry out this work, volunteers receive specific training to offer presence, listening and respectful accompaniment to people experiencing loneliness, as well as training for the management of their own teams.
All these initiatives aim to develop an intervention that strengthens a more sensitive and inclusive community network and provides benefits to emotional well-being. This well-being translates, on the one hand, into an improvement in the lives of those receiving services, and on the other hand, into the well-being of the volunteers themselves.
Volunteering from this community perspective fosters an active and transformative commitment to what happens inside and outside the organization, and is a fundamental tool to combat misinformation, prejudice, and hate speech.
