Volunteering needs professional help

Volunteering, says Walter Aichinger, is a constant endeavor. It’s about getting volunteers and even more about keeping volunteers. The President of the Red Cross in Upper Austria is certain: “This constant effort must be placed in professional hands. We need professional employees in the organizations and proper structural support”. Aichinger is currently chairman of the Volunteer Council, in which Upper Austria’s rescue and security organizations pool their strengths. “We have been purchasing vehicles, equipment and material for decades. But people have been forgotten because that’s how it worked anyway. Structural support is also essential in the fire service,” says Markus Voglhuber, who represented the fire department at the first meeting of the Volunteer Council .

The advice is one of many results of a manifesto that the OÖ Nachrichten had formulated together with the voluntary organizations. Another result was shared yesterday in the person of Michael Secklehner at the first official meeting in the Ursulinenhof in Linz: he heads the newly founded service point for volunteers at the state of Upper Austria. Secklehner and his colleagues are currently working on the “Ehrenamtsmonitor 2023”, a study intended to reflect public opinion and sentiment about volunteering. Results should be available in mid-May. On June 30th the big day of honorary work will take place in Linz – possibly even on the main square. Thanks to the manifesto, there are now also regional volunteer days, which, according to Martin Eberl, deputy head of the water rescue service, “have taken exactly the right direction for us.”