The Government of the Republic of Serbia has established a national platform where volunteers can apply at www.budivolonter.gov.rs, as well as a unified contact centre “COVID-19”, which can be reached by dialling 19819. 

We herewith issue an open call to all citizens who are not in any of the population groups at risk and wish to help our citizens belonging to the oldest age group, as well as other population groups at risk, to volunteer for this duty, because solidarity and empathy towards those citizens who are exposed to the greatest risks during the course of the Corona virus pandemic are of the utmost importance.

Interested citizens can volunteer in two ways – by filling in an application form at the website www.budivolonter.gov.rs or by calling the COVID-19 contact centre by dialling number 19819, free of charge, every day from 08 to 22 o’clock. After the authorised services have approved their applications, the volunteers will be contacted by city and municipal crisis headquarters, which will provide them with detailed instructions and give them their first tasks.

All the applications submitted by citizens interested in helping and working as volunteers will be checked with a view to preventing any possibility of abuse.

By dialling number 19819, citizens may receive advice and recommendations of experts on how to fight the Corona virus, and they can also contact the competent professional services throughout the state – the Ministry of Health, the Institute for the Public Health of Serbia “Dr Milan Jovanović Batut”, the City Institute for Public Health Belgrade, the Institutes for Public Health of Vojvodina, Kragujevac and Niš, the institutes of Vojvodina, Šumadija, Western Serbia, Southern and Eastern Serbia, as well as the Institute of Public Health of Kosovska Mitrovica.

The operators’ working hours are from 8 to 22 o’clock every day, whereas our citizens will have the opportunity to obtain information on what COVID-19 is and how it is transmitted, what the symptoms are, how it is treated, how they can protect themselves, and also to receive recommendations on how to maintain their living and working space in hygienic conditions 24 hours a day.

The contact centre can be reached by dialling 19819 free of charge by the users of all the networks, irrespective of whether they are fixed telephony or mobile operators.

The national platform for volunteers to report to, entitled “Be a Volunteer”, as well as the contact centre, have been realised by the Emergency Sector of the Ministry of the Interior and the Office for Information Technologies and Electronic Administration, in cooperation with the platform “Serbia Creates”, with the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).