Engagement program – volunteering at Mareena

This engagement program effectively demonstrates how to work with and support volunteers actively helping and mentoring refugees and other foreigners living in Slovakia. Run by the organization Mareena, the program facilitates the integration of refugees and foreigners into Slovak society through fully coordinated volunteering efforts. Coordination plays a crucial role: volunteers are fully supported by a volunteer coordinator responsible for their well-being, monitoring, and ongoing communication. The coordinator, together with the program's management, handles volunteer recruitment, selection, training, and capacity building. This ensures volunteers continually broaden their expertise and skills, which they then apply when working with refugee and foreign communities. The program has been operating since 2018 and is constantly evaluated and developed. It has received nominations for and won several volunteer awards, and in 2024, it received accreditation from the Ministry of Interior for the quality of its volunteering activities.