NATIONAL CIVIL SERVICE

What is the “National Civil Service”

The National Civil Service has its own history and it goes back to the 1970s. It has established itself as a mean of peaceful and non-violent choice, instead of the military service. Nowadays, It has been recognised and supported by the italian State as a type of direct commitment and action at a local level and in less developped areas of the world.

16 white helmets spent most of their 2018 service period on projects abroad: Mumbai (India) Panchu
(Romania), Quito (Ecuador) Lima and Ayacucho (Perù), Fianarantsoa (Madagascar) while 8 volunteers
spent the same period in Italy: 6 in IBO headquarters in Ferrara and 2 in the Parma seat.

A UNIVERSAL CALL

The new ordinary call for NCS was published in the summer 2018. The applications received were 92 (78 for projects abroad and 14 for projects in Italy).

The selections were held in September: 20 white helmets on projects abroad, 8 for the Italian project, 1 experimental project lasting 1 year including a month in Panchu (Romania). All these volunteers started their service in February 2019.

In 2018, IBO was accredited to the National Civil Service (NCS) register, still as part of FOCSIV, as well as to the Universal Civil Service (UCS) register of the Youth Policy and Univesal Civil Service Department – Precidency of the Council of Ministers.

CIVIL PEACE CORPS

The first 3 IBO Civil Peace Corps completed their service in 2018. They left for Lima suburbs in mid 2017 for this new form of unarmed and non-violent civil defence and came back to Italy at the end of May to take part to a national event in Rome on the Republic day.

A second project was presented on 14th May 2018 involving 2 volunteers in Pueblo Nuevo de Colan-Paita (Perù), in the field of education to peace, in an area risking social conflict.