Estonia
Name the most significant social problems in the community?
- The most significant social problems in our community: lack of youth engagement in the community, lack of affordable social housing for young families, lack of family orientated places to go and things to do, dysfunctional families, alcohol addiction. Intolerance: Estonian and Russian minorities (Narva is almost fully populated by the Russian- speaking minority.) A lot of non-citizens: people don`t trust the government (low turnout on the election). Locals are not willing to voluntarily take actions in order to make their hometown better, voluntary work on making a difference is not popular, which probably originates from really material values.
How can the volunteers participate in helping to solve each of these issues?
- They can work with children and fire their interest in learning languages and spread the culture, new life in the city, new ideas, and promotion for non-formal education. To teach young people from the early age to understand that they are a part of the community and they also have responsibility for environment around us. This job could be done with collaborations of volunteers and teachers from kindergartens and schools. The affordable housing can be addressed to the higher level by volunteers gathering information and statistic (survey) about poverty within young families. Volunteers could also find potential investors by gathering and sharing community needs. Even creating a commumity café all based on volunteers. Make a place for unemployed people where they can be helpful for the community in exchange for something but money (for example if person was an electrician and he could help some old lady with his service she could pay him with fruits or vegetables she has grown in her summer house). Just be a good person and tell people who you are and what you do here. Ask people how they feel about their nationalities living in their hometown, make them reflect on what reasons why they( or their friends, family..) have a such attitude towards others.
Full Document
