2.10 Current debates and reforms
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Ongoing debates
The Seimas declared 2022 as the Year of Volunteering, which aimed not only to mark the decade of legalization of volunteering in Lithuania, but also to draw attention to the importance of public involvement in voluntary activities and the contribution of volunteers in contributing to the control of the consequences of Covid-19, the reception of war refugees from Ukraine, and the employment of their children and etc. In addition, 2022 was also declared the Year of Youth, and at the end of 2022, for the first time in Lithuania, Marijampole city was declared the Lithuanian Youth Capital of 2023, where considerable attention will be paid to youth volunteering issues: will be held training for mentors, discussions on volunteering issues, youth volunteer awards, etc.
Forthcoming policy developments
The main changes are related to the implementation of the 2020 Order "On the approval of the description of the quality and supervision procedure for the implementation of youth voluntary service", which defines the stages of organizing the youth voluntary service, the quality criteria of the activities of organizations that organize voluntary activities and host volunteers, as well as quality control measures and procedures. In this document, it is determined that organizations organizing voluntary activities organize a suitable volunteer learning process, which can be considered as the basis for the development of a volunteer training system. Some organizations have approved training methods for volunteers.
Another type of volunteering - voluntary work, and at the same time the quality of the volunteering service, is ensured through the accreditation system of institutions accepting volunteers, the main starting point of which is the Order "On Approval of the Procedure for Accreditation of Organizations which ones Organize Youth Voluntary Activities" issued in 2018, updated at the end of 2020 (new is here). At the beginning of 2022, a new order was adopted (the predecessor was adopted in 2019), defining the accreditation of organizations accepting youth volunteers.