VOLUNTEERING INFRASTRUCTURE

The European Year of Volunteering (EYV) 2011 aimed to develop and promote an enablingand facilitating environment for volunteering in Europe. Section 4 of the Policy Agendafor Volunteering in Europe (P.A.V.E), developed by the EYV 2011 Alliance during EYV2011,describes volunteering infrastructure as concluded by the working group on volunteeringinfrastructure that was co-chaired by CEV. P.A.V.E echoes many of the recommendationssubmitted by the contributors to this publication and vice versa. We invite policy makers andcivil society to take note of the weaknesses and strengths of volunteering infrastructure acrossEurope and take due action to develop the strengths and reduce the weaknesses using therecommendations for action included in these two resources as a basis.We hope that in publishing this resource, which will be developed during the coming monthsand years to keep the data as up to date as possible, CEV can make another contribution to theknowledge base about volunteering in Europe. This document should provide volunteeringstakeholders from whichever sector a valuable source of data on which to inform and build stepstowards an improved enabling and facilitating environment for volunteering in Europe and soadding an additional aspect to the EYV 2011 legacy.Eva HambachCEV President9 Volunteering infrastructure in Europe V Introduction