BONSAI was founded in 2008. in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Our main program Volunteering centre Dubrovnik was founded 2010. Centre is a part of National network of volunteering centres. We are providing set of services to our local community and wider defined by standards for local volunteer centres. Some of services we offer are: education (for volunteers and volunteer coordinators), counselling and assisting with organizing volunteer programs as well as promoting volunteering. We work with individual volunteers, organizations, institutions, schools, universities and profit sector.
Currently we work on sixth project for development of local volunteering centre enhancing volunteer infrastructure in the area. We connect open volunteer positions within different NGOs in our town and volunteers that have applied on our on-line base „Burza Dobrote“, from 2013. All of our employees are educated for volunteer coordinators and trainers for Volunteering management which we organize once or twice a year. A lot of our volunteer activities are focused on high school youth: volunteering actions, short informative lectures, debate on volunteering- „Can volunteering change the world“. We have two of our own volunteering program within BONSAI. One of them is „Learning Saturday“ –that constantly provides (last three years) volunteer instructions for primary school kids from socially vulnerable families with aim to help kids with school difficulties but also by mentoring them. Results are most welcomed by school experts and parents of the children included and we have a waiting list of volunteers lined up for that program.
We work closely with students radio station UNIDU and our common project is radio show on volunteering- Good Vibrations, held twice a month. Through Volunteering centre we were partners in project aimed to help organizations from local community to get competences in computer skills, writing and applying projects for EU funds and in organizing their volunteering programs. We developed Volunteer career guide (VOLCAR) together with EDOS Foundation and CEV (European volunteer centre) to keep volunteers more skilled for using their experience gained through volunteering when applying for a job.
http://www.udrugabonsai.hr/newbonsai/
Our second program is Festival Trece uho (Third Ear Festival)- festival of foreign culture in Dubrovnik. Our festival’s mission is to get our community active and participating by promoting volunteering and to invest our time in opportunities for cultural collaboration. Every year in beginning of November we organize five days program including concerts, exhibitions, workshops, lectures and movie screenings. First festival was held in 2011. – we focused on India, in 2012. on Japan, in 2013. it was about Nordic countries, in 2014., Canada, in 2015., Italy, and in 2016., Australia. This year we are focused on Bosnia and Herzegovina. Festival Trece uho is completely run on volunteering power. Some of our festival guests were: singer Dhroe Nankoe, aikido sensei and zen priest Shimamoto Katsuyuki Shihan, professor and former ambassador of Croatia in Sweden Branko Caratan, feminist activist Rada Boric, Canadian jazz trio Eric St-Laurent Trio, Judith V. Burch an expert in Inuit art and Shawn Kinley, improvisation artist.
We are a team of three employees and 25 volunteers (including all 5 members of our Governance Board)