Bergamo, the Italian Capital of Voluntary Service 2022, recounts the voluntary work

"Volunteering 2022 tells its story: different identities in a common narrative" is the title of the conference organized by the Department of Civil Protection, CSVnet, CSV Bergamo and the Municipality of Bergamo on Saturday, November 12, in the Aula Magna of the University of Bergamo.

This is an opportunity to start a confrontation between the world of organized civil protection volunteering and voluntary associations, to foster the knowledge and the understanding of two different realities. A further purpose of the conference is to encourage the creation of new synergies between volunteerism, the Third Sector and the private social world so as to work ever better in difficult situations.

Among the participants, the Head of the Department, Fabrizio Curcio, the Mayor of Bergamo, Giorgio Gori, the President of the National Committee of Civil Protection Volunteers, Dario Pasini, and Chiara Tommasini, President of CSVnet. Sergio Cavalieri, Rector of the University of Bergamo, opened the event. Participants include also representatives of volunteering, the entire civil protection system and the Third Sector world. The event is structured in three moments: Who we are; How we tell our story; and Where we meet.

The Head of the Department intervened at the conference, via video link, with these words: "Civil protection volunteering keeps growing on its path to improve the resources to help the country. It does so by working also in ordinary situations. With the engagement in new and different emergencies, such as the Ukraine emergency, civil protection volunteers need to work in synergy with other volunteers. It is therefore important to foresee and encourage moments like this, in which the two realities tell their stories and confront each other to find a new common ground."

During the meeting, civil defense volunteers come forward and recount their experiences in emergencies: interventions on cultural heritage in Umbria and Marche in 1997 to the preparation of reception areas in Abruzzo in 2009, the support to local services in Central Italy in the years 2016 and 2017, the assistance to the population during the Covid-19 emergency. Civil protection volunteers also illustrated their ordinary activities aimed at caring for the territory and spreading the culture of civil protection. These interventions show how valuable training and education are for the success of initiatives such as the information campaign "I don't take risks - Good practices of civil protection" that aims to raise citizens' awareness of the risks of the territory.

The initiative taking place in Bergamo is one of the initiatives included in the Memorandum of Understanding, signed by the Civil Protection Department and CSVnet, which aims to pool different skills to achieve common goals in the field of civil protection..