ABOUT US

ABOUT THE PROJECT/SCHEME
Volunteer in a Family’ is a project executed as a part of the Good Parent – Good Start Programme run by the Empowering Children Foundation and it is addressed to parents of children up to 3 years old.

The project started in 2010. In the beginning ‘Volunteer in a Family’ was executed in only 2 districts of Warsaw. Because of a growing interest and demand for this kind of help, since the end of 2012 all Warsaw parents can benefit from the offer.

What do we do?

The aim of this project is to support families with small children and this is done by Volunteers who are parents themselves or have some parenting experience. They visit families in their own homes once a week and help parents to overcome the difficulties which may be encountered as a result of difficult life situations. More and more parents nowadays feel lonely and have no one to share their experiences with or ask for advice. Volunteers help with issues of caring for and raising small children. Our funding comes mostly from City Hall. We cooperate with professionals such as social care worker, nurses, midwives and psychologists.

Who are the volunteers?

Volunteers are people who have parental experience and understand that being a parent is beautiful but also overwhelming at times. So far we have run three training courses for the volunteers. Volunteers assist families with small children in their everyday life (i.e. talk with parents, listen to their problems, share their experiences, play with parents and children, familiarise parents with the available offers of social, psychological and medical help and encourage families to participate in local community life). We provide support for our volunteers from psychologists and regular meetings with the coordinator of the project.

Who are the project beneficiaries? Briefly speaking, we support families with at least one child under three years old who find themselves going through tough times (single parents, social isolation, economic and financial problems, unemployment in the family, mental or somatic disabilities of a parent or small child etc.). These are parents who experience constant stress and cannot cope on their own. Since 2010 we have helped 17 families.

Plans for the future We would like to run two new training courses for Volunteers. Our aim is to have a group of 20 Volunteers who will take care of at least 20 families with infant children by the end of 2019.