Your diocesan CARITAS Volunteer Services office can connect you with all available volunteer opportunities in your area—soup kitchens, listening centers, and more.
Through your municipal Social Services department, you can learn about group homes for children, young mothers, people with disabilities, residential care facilities for the elderly, and other community services. Volunteers are almost always needed in these places, and their presence makes a genuine difference.
- Italian Union of the Blind: Local chapters welcome volunteers to read and record texts for people who are blind or visually impaired.
- ARVAS in Lazio and similar organizations across Italy arrange volunteer support for isolated patients in hospitals.
- Other associations focus on home care for the terminally ill.
- At your parish: there are countless ways to help—from maintaining the building to teaching catechism and much more.
- In women's detention facilities, young children sometimes live with their mothers. Volunteer organizations arrange activities and outings for them too.
- In recent years, community centers have opened to teach Italian free of charge to adult immigrants and foreign children attending public schools.
- Red Cross, Amnesty International, Greenpeace—and many others. These organizations create opportunities to serve in nearly every field you can imagine.
Close to where you live, there is almost certainly a family caring for someone with a severe disability—physical or cognitive. With thoughtfulness and gentleness, you can offer your help, even for limited periods, tailored to what that family actually needs.