about Compagnons Batisseurs Belgium CBB youth organisation volunteering

Compagnons Bâtisseurs - Belgium

Identity of CBB

The organisation Compagnons Bâtisseurs, aka CBB, is a non-profit organization recognized and financially supported as Youth Organization by the Brussels-Wallonia Federation since 1978. It is member of the ALLIANCE of European Voluntary Service Organizations since 1997. In Belgium, CBB is member of the federation of the pluralist and independent youth organizations. Very recently, CBB also became member of the CCIVS.

As Youth Organization, CBB is managed by young volunteers. 5 Board members out of 7 and 82% of the members of the general assembly are below 35 years old.

CBB recognizes itself in a value of active pluralism. The participation in our projects always leave the participants free to make their own choice and decision concerning their personal, cultural, political or philosophical orientation and involvements so far that these orientation respect the personal situation and the dignity of any other members of the society and respect the core-values of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

All the actions of the organization are based on the principles of non-formal education (in the French meaning of Popular Education). Our projects aim to support the development of active citizens, capable of sense of responsibility, criticism and solidarity. They offer a space for interaction and expression of people from diverse origins and abilities, with the objectives to encourage their awareness on societal challenges (from local to global level), to raise new links of solidarity between them and between their communities, and to support their full participation in the society.

In that sense, any project or activity in CBB encourages:

The empowerment of free, autonomous and responsible individuals. Our projects encourage processes of social and cultural emancipation, which means that they invite their participants to reflect on the place they occupy in the society and on the role they can and they want to assume in it.
The meetings beyond the differences. Our projects encourage the awareness to the richness of human diversity and the creation of new social links.
The practices of active citizenship and the promotion of volunteering: by taking part in our projects, people should experiment new ways of participation and to be encouraged to take responsibility in their communities.
The informal and non-formal learning processes: the participation in our projects must permit the acquirement and development of competences such as self-confidence, autonomy, intercultural competences, leading skills, manual, social or linguistics abilities…

Our activities are developed thanks to a network of around 500 persons committed, more than 200 international volunteers and participants during the summer and a team of 12 employees and 3 European volunteers.

We are a Youth Organization and most of our public is aged between 16 and 25 years, even if there is not upper age limit to integrate our groups of volunteers.

Our public is diverse. Around 30 nationalities are yearly represented in our projects.

We also implement strategies to facilitate the participation of people from disadvantaged economic and social background as well as of people in situation of disability. A clear result of this strategy is that, among our members, more than 80 people are in situation of disability.

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