A major role in our project realization is played by volunteers. Young people help with organization and conducting of the project activities, where they can not only learn, but also carry out their own creative ideas. Young people have a unique opportunity to communicate with witnesses of the war events, who are willing to gladly share their invaluable life experience with the younger generation.
Student volunteers meet in the History Workshop witnesses of the war and put down stories of their lives, contributing thus to the development of culture of remembrance in Belarus. The most interesting stories are published in a monthly leaflet “News from the warm home”, which also contains information about events planned for next month within the project. Volunteers also provide social support to older people who have difficulties in dealing with domestic issues related to the household.
An important part of the work with volunteers is the psychological component of the project. German specialist on psychodrama, Fred Dorn, visits Minsk regularly to meet volunteers. At the classes on psychodrama volunteers have an opportunity to share their experience of dealing with older people, their feelings, and thoughts. In the form of a spontaneous theatrical performance they play a variety of situations, possible scenes from the lives of former forced laborers, prisoners of ghettos and concentration camps. Thus, through a theatrical play, they may plunge a while into the atmosphere of that time, into a situation which may be familiar to the elderly whom they help within the project. Thanks to this emotional experience volunteers can understand better what the elderly, the former victims of Nazism, felt in similar real-life situations.
World experience confirms that volunteer work is highly valued by society and serves the ideas of humanism, kindness and peace.
The First International volunteer forum, which took place on Dec. 1, 2008 in ICEE Minsk became an expression of public recognition of volunteer work in Belarus, as affirmed by the Second International volunteer forum in December 2009.  
International Forum of volunteers is a platform for volunteers, organizers of the volunteer movement from different countries, for representatives of state structures and civil society organizations. During the forum the perspectives in the development will be discussed. An exchange of experience among participants of projects will take place. This all serves to increase the volunteers’ status and the significance of their work in Belarus.
How to become a volunteer?
If you are interested in the idea of the project “Let’s Provide a Dignified Old Age to Witnesses of the War”, if you are interested in working with older people, each of whom has an unusual fate, if you want to participate actively in our events, we invite you to become a volunteer in the project “Let’s Provide a Dignified Old Age to Witnesses of the War”!
Students can also have an internship within the framework of our project. For more information, please contact the project manager, Marina Bachilo.
Impressions of young volunteers who work with older people within the project, you can see at http://ibb.by/en/histm/205
We will be glad to see you at the History Workshop!
Our contacts:
 
Contact person: Marina Bachilo, Project Manager
Contact person: Alesia Belanovich, assistant
History Workshop
Str. Suchaja, 25
220004 Minsk
Tel. / fax: +375 17 200 76 26
E-mail: b.marina@ibb.by
belanovich@ibb.by