On Wednesday 01/06/2015. Adem Lisičić, a representative of UG “Nešto Više”, participated in the conference ‘Volunteering in BiH – Laws and Practice’ organized by the NGO Council with the financial support of the TACSO Office in BiH – an EU project for technical assistance to the NGO sector in BiH. More than 50 participants, representatives of institutions and NGOs attended the conference. All participants agreed that there is no doubt that volunteerism is needed in BiH, that tens of thousands of volunteers do extremely valuable actions and initiatives every day, and this discussion aimed to improve their work.
It was concluded that it is necessary to synchronize the laws on volunteerism at all levels and harmonize other existing laws with the provisions of this law in order to improve the status and position of volunteers and volunteerism in BiH. In that sense, some laws, such as the Labor Law, need to be amended, for example, by deleting the term “volunteer”, because now it only confuses the status and rights of volunteers who are engaged.
Another topic discussed was increasing the level of standards and quality of volunteering, and establishing a database of volunteers and civil society organizations, redefining the way of working with volunteer books and the like. Volunteerism should remain and be defined as voluntary work, but it still means valuing and recognizing a certain status for volunteers.
One of the extremely important topics was the strengthening of cooperation between NGOs and institutions, because volunteerism should be supported as a process by the institutions, especially the work of volunteer centers. Defining a different tax policy is one of the key conclusions because there are still numerous fees for volunteering that is too burdened with taxes.
