“Put service and mission first, and you will see that everything else will follow,” said Pope Francis to volunteers at World Youth Day 2016. The volunteering programme of Caritas India focusses on making service of others as their prime mission; The good of each human person is intimately related to the good of the whole community. It implies collaboration of all sectors of the community and not working in isolation. Caritas India has always believed that individuals and communities must participate in the decisions that affect them and which they consider as most important. By promoting volunteerism across the nation Caritas India is creating social change agents to take up eliminating the social evils existing around them.

Caritas India embarked this journey of volunteering in 2018 by calling out to the citizens of our country to join hands as volunteers. Through the recent volunteer training and orientation programmes more than 100 volunteers were trained from different parts of India. The training was designed to instill the spirit of volunteering and motivate them to initiate activities around their living areas for the good of our society. Climate change being one of the main concerns surrounding us in current times, Caritas Samaritans team from Pune comprising of Anushka Pardesi, Bencyl Marak, Prerna Kadam, Pushkar, Verthone Ch Momin, Prasnanna Krishna, and Benzigar Nolas took up the initiative to contribute towards protecting our mother Earth. A plantation drive was organised on 18^th August at Centre for Police Research (CPR), Pashan Road, Pune with the motto “Be the Fighter Today and See the Change Tomorrow”. The local police authorities and corporator also joined hands in planting the saplings. Through the coordinated efforts of Caritas Samaritans, police officials and other participants 120 saplings were panted at CPR.

Along with fighting against climate change, the plantation drive was structured with a motive of promoting volunteering in Pune. The participants were also orientated on Caritas India’s activities and its vision of volunteering which helped the team to increase the number of volunteers by 30. Caritas India’s volunteering programme trains the volunteers to be owners of the initiatives been undertaken, they are also trained on raising funds for the activities. Pune Caritas Samaritans were successful in raising the required funds to undertake this initiative through the different crowdfunding platform.

Volunteers in Caritas are moved by faith and are agents who act with competence and spirituality, based on their knowledge and skills acquired. Along with such initiatives, Caritas Samaritans are also playing a vital role in flood interventions undertaken by Caritas India in different parts of India. Volunteers are being engaged in different activities such as community interaction, assessment, distribution, etc.

Nationally volunteers are also being engaged in reaching out to the individual and institutional donors of Caritas India to encourage contributions towards the flood-affected families. We at Caritas India truly believe that volunteers are people and teams committed to engage in favour of people in situations of vulnerability and social exclusion; they have compassion, at the root of their actions undertaken and is continuously engaged in developing these agents of change in every part of our nation.