Serve the city28 juni 2007 – 18:40

Volunteers will serve at over 40 locations across the city. Along Rue Haute, Nativitas, Les Petits Soeurs des Pauvres, and Caria are some examples of the associations that will receive volunteers. Serve the City volunteers will also organise a week of activities at Foyer Selah and Le Petit Chateau, the main refugee centers in Brussels.

Serve the City aims to inspire ordinary people to do small things, believing that volunteering is common ground that promotes social inclusion.

As a result, Serve the City is committed to involving people from all walks of life in community service. Key partners will include associations whose members and administrators are mostly Muslim, such as the Foyer des Jeunes de Montserrat, just beneath the Palais de Justice. This Foyer works with mostly Moroccan youth. One group of young girls became volunteers after Serve the City last year. US volunteers joined with the FJM to go to a home for the elderly, and gave free haircuts and manicures. Nadia Ifkirin, the director of afterschool programmes, said, "these girls who have very little saw people with even less. They now have a chance to realize that they have something to give, not simply to receive."

The basketball camp at the Rempart des Moines gym (St. Catherine) is also in a Moroccan neighbourhood. The weeklong sports program will end with a tournament at the Klinkende Munt festival on Friday 6 July.

In 2005, Serve the City's first year, roughly 150 volunteers were involved. Last year this rose to 250 and this year "Serve the City" hopes for at least 500 people to join them by volunteering to help with projects. Volunteers can register online to join the wave at www.servethecity.be