BIR

BIR was formally established in 1999 in Milan by Don Virginio Rigoldi, in collaboration with individual volunteers and associations. The BIR work develops along two lines. On the one, the protection of children, with particular attention to minors living in conditions of vulnerability, abandonment, poverty and discrimination: the initiatives that BIR supports are focused on prevention, educational support, improvement of material living conditions and empowerment of the skills of young people and adults. At the same time, BIR promotes solidarity and active citizenship, with awareness-raising, training and activation proposals that have reached and engaged thousands of young people and adults in twenty years. Each year, part of BIR's energies are catalyzed around the organization and training of volunteers for the Summer Camps (short experiences of international mobility). Despite the Covid emergency and the inability to travel, volunteering and solidarity activities and the growth paths of young people have remained at the center of the associative action, pushing BIR to experiment new actions in the Milan, Como and Rome areas with the activation of over 80 volunteers in animation and support actions for families in in needs. BIR actively collaborates with people, organizations and institutions, on a local, national and European scale, building paths of change inspired by the logic of participation and sustainability; it also collaborates in Romania with local organizations and public institutions and thanks to a more significant presence in the territory, over the years it has expanded the collaborations with third sector realities and many other local realities. Since 2010 BiR has also been active in the Republic of Moldova, collaborating with Caritas Ambrosiana, Diaconia and the Filantropia Cristiana Association in day centers and in the area with local volunteers. In 20 years, about 2,500 volunteers trained in Italy have participated in the summer camps, guests of Romanian and Moldovan institutions with interventions aimed at an emotional, relational and cultural exchange with the children present in the institutes or in fragile areas. To promote volunteering, BIR organizes awareness-raising meetings aimed at young people, directly in their contexts: schools, universities, community centers, parishes, directly raising awareness over 1,000 young people every year. In addition to all this and beyond the emergency, BIR constantly promotes volunteering in the social associations and cooperatives of the Milan and Como network and in other Lombardy provinces, collaborates with various associations at local level and with different schools to initiate young people to volunteer , is experimenting with school formats on solidarity and discrimination issues, is part of the local network Mi-Generation Net with the Municipality of Milan (as an accredited body for volunteering and mobility guidance services) and of the Como Senza Frontiere network. For years a group has been working in the Juvenile Penal Institute in Milan and the association is increasingly working for the inclusion and non-discrimination of young people with fewer opportunities. Since 2015, volunteers from Como have been collaborating in the Cold Emergency project, supporting homeless people housed in the public dormitory. For a couple of years BIR has been working on community development projects in the neighborhoods where it operates. In the last two years, two European projects have been carried out on the (social and educational) inclusion of young people and against discrimination. BIR is registered in the Lombardy Regional Register of Volunteering; since 2013 it has been accredited for international mobility projects with a total of over 30 young people involved in long-term projects. In 2019 the association has also started working on youth exchanges and training for youthworkers with the direct involvement of volunteers in the design. With regard to internat