11 December - International Mountain Day

International Mountain Day this year is dedicated to minorities and indigenous peoples. However, since we recently celebrated International Volunteer Day on December 5, and next year will be the European Year of Volunteering, and at the same time two of our members received important recognition in this field, we at the Alpine Association of Slovenia have decided to highlight volunteering on International Mountain Day – volunteering as the foundation of our activities and as a value worth striving for and working on.



Personal satisfaction, a smile on people's faces, the word THANK YOU, these are our rewards and of course the people who keep coming back to our trips, hikes, activities, trainings, become active club workers or even active as professional volunteer staff – PZS guides, path markers, orienteering instructors, youth leaders, trail makers, mountain nature guardians, ski-touring and cycling guides, mentors of mountaineering groups, sport climbing coaches, sport climbing judges, mountaineering education instructors and alpine instructors ... All these professional staff, all club workers and workers in the mountaineering organization itself, which has almost 60,000 members, from management to all commissions etc., are volunteers.



In Europe more than 100 million people perform volunteer work in their field that is not paid with money. They contribute time, energy, knowledge. According to a European Union survey, we are classified among countries with a low rate of volunteering. We certainly cannot say that about the Alpine Association of Slovenia, where volunteering is our foundation, also written in the PZS Statute, and it permeates every work in mountaineering. However, we want to strengthen volunteering in Slovenia also with the help of all of you in true social capital.



The state intends to regulate volunteering legally as well. Non-governmental organizations submitted the first draft of the Law to the government back in 2004. After years of waiting, pressures from

non-governmental organizations for the adoption of this law intensified in 2008. On October 29 this year, the Government of the Republic of Slovenia adopted the text of the proposal for the Volunteer Law, which now has the path open for adoption in the National Assembly. To promote volunteering, the preparation of a volunteering development strategy is planned, which the Government of the Republic of Slovenia will adopt for a period of five years.

We agree that volunteering needs to be encouraged with even greater attention both in society and among individuals. Volunteer work in Slovenia has never been comprehensively and systematically regulated until now, which has often hindered the implementation of individual volunteer activities. The adoption of the law also brings recognition of the importance of volunteering and for the first time provides systemic levers for its development. The law regulates important issues of non-governmental organizations, so we strive for its adoption. We also want the interests of all volunteers and volunteer organizations to be united in the law.



It is time for money and material goods to lose the value that consumer society persistently attributes to them and exploits for its own purposes. It is time to give volunteering the weight and value it deserves. It is time to turn from having to being.



We are proud of all volunteers who invest their time, effort, energy, joy, enthusiasm, ideas and knowledge into their mountaineering work in clubs and the mountaineering organization.



We are proud of our two awarded members. Of Rozalija Skobe, member of PD Krka Novo mesto and former head of the Commission for the Protection of Mountain Nature, who on International Volunteer Day and the opening of the European Year of Volunteering 2011 received the plaque of the National Council of the RS among twelve individuals from all over Slovenia as the most deserving volunteer of 2010. Rozalija has been successful for more than 36 years in the field of youth education and nature protection, especially mountain nature. In 1997, PZS obtained the status of a society operating in the public interest in the field of nature conservation based on her successful work and the work of KVGN. Upon receiving the plaque, she said among other things: "I am very happy, grateful, honored and proud. I think this is also a great recognition for the Alpine Association of Slovenia and especially for the PZS Commission for the Protection of Mountain Nature, because in this way all those of us who have worked in the commission in recent years have proven that we have done good work and that we are on the right path."



We are also proud of Magdalena Strmšek from PD Moravče, who together with six other volunteers became an ambassador of volunteering in the European Year of Volunteering 2011. Magdalena, who works in the fields of prevention, addictions, youth, international volunteering and youth exchanges, and also as a companion to persons with intellectual disabilities, says: "I am proud, this is an honorable appointment. Although volunteering is actually a way of life for me. I don't burden myself with where and in which clubs I am all active. Where they need me, I help, also in the mountaineering club on youth trips and camps. This award, appointment, is also an award for all the numerous volunteers in the local community who don't even get THANK YOU, but volunteering is also a way of life for them. Why am I a volunteer? Quite simply because of personal satisfaction – the more you give, the more you get. I have received a lot, both in knowledge and friends, I have gained a lot in self-respect and self-confidence, in values. Even though there is often no response, not everyone will say THANK YOU to you, your work is often not noticed, but you must not lose hope with that. It is worth it, believe me."



In the spirit of the European Year of Volunteering 2011 and volunteering, without which there would be no our mountaineering organization with the motto "mountaineering as a way of life" and no enthusiastic young mountaineers in kindergartens nor satisfied, happy members of mature years, I wish you: "Be a volunteer, change the world!"



Bojan Rotovnik,

president of PZS