2019 was the 3rd year of MilONGa; a year in which the program has continued to expand and attract many young people from different parts of the world.
More than 100 young people have registered on our platform www.milongaproject.org interested in learning more about the program and gaining an international volunteer experience. Of these, around 30 have completed or are serving in social organizations in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and another 20 are preparing to do so in 2020.
One of the objectives proposed for this year was to improve the quality of the program. In this sense, we have undertaken some actions, such as the consolidation of "pre-departure" training spaces for the volunteers from Spain and Brazil.
We carried out a joint training day consisting of two sessions in which the volunteers had the opportunity to get to know each other and exchange expectations and reflections on the service they were about to perform.
Work has also been done to improve links with local communities around the social organizations, to make people understand the very important role of the "MilONGa families", which are those who host the volunteers during the period of their service. The meeting to present the program to the community of Punta Alta, the Argentine city where the Centro Social Nuevos Horizontes is located, and the experience made by the host families of Montevideo, Uruguay, who welcomed for the first time two volunteers who had their experience at the Nueva Vida Social Center.
Another important fact that happened in 2019 was the accreditation of milONGa to the international volunteer program - "Solidarity Corps" in the European Union. This not only means that MilONGa meets the standards of volunteering at a European level, but opens the doors for many other young people to have a volunteer experience in milONGa's partner social organizations.
This fact, in addition to being a source of great joy, poses new challenges for 2020. On the one hand, the need to continue the work of improving the quality of the program, that is, to continue the training given to volunteers and to accompany local communities and social organizations in the experience that they carry out through milONGa.
On the other hand, faced with the ever-increasing demand from young people, it is necessary to expand the offer of social organizations in other countries and, at the same time, work with local communities everywhere.
The developments of 2019 reconfirm that milONGa is an answer, an increasingly attractive alternative for many young people who want to act, who want to contribute to the construction of a different world, and this in turn pushes us to work harder in 2020 because ... changing the world is in your hands.