The Community Service is a program that integrates the extracurricular activities, is available within the 1st Cycle in Psychology and aims to provide a volunteer experience to Psychology students. All students that complete at least 48h of volunteering receive a certificate.
The experience meets real needs of the surrounding community and contributes to the development of social intervention and relational skills, fundamental for the full exercise of Psychology, complementing professional training with human training.
The Community Service has "AGIT" as its motto and is organized around several options:
- Agit Once, which involves involvement in one-off volunteer actions;
- Agit Once Again, which involves involvement in already existing volunteer projects, through protocols with institutions in the community;
- Agit Solidariamente, which involves organizing donation actions/campaigns, such as donating blood, food, clothes, among others;
- Agit Clean Face, which involves organizing and implementing actions to requalify institutions' spaces (homes, schools, hospitals or even the university itself);
- Agit Onde Verde (Where Green), which organizes and implements actions aimed at environmental sustainability, such as planting trees, collecting garbage, or actions to raise awareness among specific populations;
- AGIT Obras no Andar de Cima, which involves implementing awareness and prevention actions with students from primary and secondary schools, as well as users in institutions that support people with mental illness, with the aim of fighting stigma in the context of mental health;
- AGIT VI (international volunteering).
There is also the possibility of establishing protocols with institutions suggested by student volunteers or creating their own projects.
Where are we?
- Cruz Vermelha Portuguesa (Delegações Braga e Fafe)
- Projeto Homem
- Vida Norte
- APAV
- Refood
- Nascer do Sol
- ADDAVV
- Externato Paulo VI
- Projeto "Hora do Conto" do Núcleo Rotary
- IMA
- Asilo S. José
- CERCI Braga
- Irmãs Hospitaleiras – Casa de Saúde do Bom Jesus
- Jardim de Infância de Antime (Fafe)
- Jardim de Infância de Gualtar
- Canil/Gatil Municipal de Santo Tirso
If you are a Psychology student, find out what CAUSE IS INSPIRING YOU and join us because volunteers can change the world!
"Do a little good everywhere you are; it's those little bits of good, together, that transform the world" (Desmond Tutu)
Community Psychology Service 2021-2022: 32 students
Blood donation campaign ("Every Drop Counts") in partnership with the Portuguese Blood Institute
Exchange fair ("Troca Comigo") in the scope of responsible and sustainable consumption
Some testimonials:
"After this great and unique adventure, I couldn't be more grateful to the educators, assistants and all the children I was in charge of. I confess that the beginning was quite scary, because I felt lost, I felt I didn't have the tools to succeed, but as time went by that space became for me a kind of second home. It stopped being a simple classroom and became a space where I welcomed others' emotions and others mine."
"Being a volunteer is to welcome, to embrace, to listen, to make ourselves available to others, body and soul. I end this experience with a fuller heart, a lighter mind, and a backpack of knowledge that I intend to take into my future. Besides volunteering transforming me as a person, it will influence my academic path towards Psychology."
"To conclude, all the projects developed in the Community Service allowed me to evolve, I changed my perception about people with alcohol and drug addiction, I developed my communication skills and most importantly I felt that I contributed to improve a little the lives of people with whom I had the possibility to contact, in the Man project, and with whom I had no possibility to contact, but I knew I was making a difference, the campaign Every Drop Counts and SOS Ukraine."
Congratulations to all those who did not want to remain indifferent!
The volunteers deserve our sincere thanks!
Community Psychology Service 2022-2023: 58 students
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