“GATE TOWARDS EDUCATION FOR ALL – GTEA”
I. 1 long term September 4th 2015 – September 4th 2016
8 EVS volunteers from 4 countries
II. 1 short term June 20th – August 19th 2016
10 EVS volunteers from 5 countries
Volunteer profile: the volunteers hosted in our projects are desired to be passionate about learning and education, love working with children and youth, and show an open minded attitude towards different cultures. Also, we wish they are flexible with the activities they take part in and willing to integrate in their host community and socialize with other youth, as they will work in an international environment and part of a multinational team. There will be no special requirements apart from being positive, energetic, outgoing, communicative, and at least a basic level of English as they will be serving as part of an international team, and some linguistic common ground is desirable. The portrait of the volunteer mentioned above might be helpful for orientation, however it is not a strict requirement.
Documents: CV and motivation letter, and then application form that we will provide.
Description of the project
Most relevant topics:
EU citizenship, EU awareness and democracy
grassroots sports
YOUTH (participation, youth work)
Project Objectives The proposed project has two major themes: European awareness and Children the following objectives:
Providing learning opportunities as well as practical life experience for acknowledging the key European values, for a total of eighteen EVS volunteers, eight youth for long term, respectively ten youth for the short term as well as 150 young volunteers from Baia Mare and Maramureş county, through activities with children and youth, within their twelve months of service, respectively two months of service.
Promoting active involvement of 1500 young people in the life of their community through awareness campaigns, volunteering and non-formal education activities for children and youth, with the support of our eighteen EVS volunteers, for twelve months.
Promoting young people's involvement in a more inclusive growth, through volunteering and non-formal educational activities, that will support 150 youngsters with unemployment risk, to become more mobile and adopt a pro-active behaviour in society.
Promoting healthy life styles for 500 children and youth, within at least 7 rural and urban communities, from Baia Mare City and Maramureş County, through grassroots sports and outdoor activities.
Practical Arrangements
AIST will make sure all necessary logistic arrangements will be made to ensure a successful service and project implementation. These include:
Travel arrangements: providing travel routes and best price with a travel agent’s support.
AIST will provide volunteers with bikes for their local transport.
Accommodation: all our EVS volunteers will be hosted in good and safe housing conditions in Baia Mare, the capital city of the county of Maramureş.
Banking: Upon arrival: opening bank accounts and providing bank cards so that the monthly food allowance to cover all meals and also pocket money could be wired in due time.
Health: registration with a family doctor. Making sure they all have Cigna activated and other optional insurances.
The EVS volunteers will work on average seven hours every day and have two days off every weekend. Also, they will benefit from a monthly holiday of two days.
Language: Their Romanian lessons will be taught by professional teachers and will take place twice a week, in sessions of one hour each.
Upon arrival to Baia Mare, our EVS volunteers will be inducted on the aspects below:
- administrative, health and safety procedures and inner regulations
- the aims, objectives and activities of the EVS project they are involved in
- their individual learning plan, and YouthPass Process with their mentors.
The first week for the short term service, that our EVS volunteers will spend in our project will be organized as preparations for this project. The teen volunteers will undergo an induction session from our staff and volunteers. They will get acquainted with the environment of their project by experiencing their future tasks. Also they will get orientated in the area with the help of our mentors and volunteers and will start discovering our community. They will get acquainted with their mentors, coordinators, and language teachers. According to the project activities, each volunteer will receive special task related tutoring and mentoring.
Our organisation has loads to offer both in terms of learning opportunities working alongside our staff and volunteers and from the interaction with the children and youth that are benefiting from our programmes. During and at the end of the service, following discussions on the learning achievements with the mentor, each volunteer shall be guided and fully supported to receive their YouthPass Certificate, AIST staff will take good care of this procedure.
AIST acts in capacity of Host Organisation for this project as well. In this respect we have been implementing actions such as:
- contracting experienced mentors for delivering quality personal support to our EVS volunteers
- assuring all needed support, during the Learning process and obtaining their Youthpass Certificate, to the volunteers through adequate space for reflection and by providing them with tools and methods to help them reflect both individually and with their peers
- holding ongoing monitoring and regular evaluation of the project meetings
- organising support training sessions on topics and with suitable methods
- offering quality supervision and constant guidance, including tangible learning opportunities for each of our volunteers, provided by our team of experienced staff and domestic volunteers
- facilitating the volunteers the process of integration into the life of our local community, to socialize with other EVS and international volunteers and young people as well
- providing good flat accommodation and a monthly food allowance to the volunteers in agreed terms, also ensuring bikes for free local transport
- giving the monthly allowance of 60 euros for each of our volunteers.
Their Youthpass Certificate has its place within a wider framework of European education and employment, this outcome of their learning process during the service period could be regarded as rather the first step, with many more to follow on their personal and professional development.
Preparation of Participants
task-related: We are highly committed to supervising the volunteers properly. AIST has assigned 6 permanent staff members to act as task related support persons for our EVS volunteers, according to the objectives of the project and the weekly schedule of activities. They will have an evaluation meeting every week, to identify progress and areas that need additional support.
linguistic: before and during the service, once the volunteers are selected, they will receive guidance on how to make the most of available linguistic support, online and/or attending courses. At the end of the service, they will be fully supported in order to carry out a second online language assessment to measure their progress achieved in the language used for volunteering. AIST has already identified amongst our staff professional teachers for the Romanian lessons. The language sessions will be organized twice a week for our EVS volunteers, with 1 session of Romanian language/week and 1 session of Romanian culture and civilization/week
Intercultural: since the selection process, they will receive info on the hosting organization, community, region and country, in the project InfoPack for EVS volunteers,
Mentoring: First of all, we will provide volunteers with qualified and experienced mentors. Having good mentors to share their concerns and job related issues is a very good prevention method of any possible crisis. The mentors will also be in continuous contact with the representatives of the partner sending organisations and will inform them should it be the case. The EVS volunteers, in the event of an emergency, could call their mentor 24 hours to get needed information or help. The mentors will facilitate the integration of the EVS volunteers into the local community, by introducing them to other young people and EVS volunteers from our area, and will also advice them on available leisure activities in the area. The mentors will meet on a regular basis with each of the volunteers and held individual and group mentoring sessions. Since their first meetings the mentors and EVS volunteers will discuss and agree on a “contract” on how the mentorship will be carried out, with setting roles, responsibilities and the limits. Some of the methods used during the process will include: one to one discussions, group discussions, mind maps, drawing, games, SWOT analysis, monitoring and evaluation tools, team building exercises and trips etc
All these support measures and tools will help them to have a successful EVS service and to ease their readjustment within their home community by making the most of their international experience as well.
We will prevent any possible risks and crisis by, providing all the necessary information on the rights and responsibilities of the volunteer during the preparation period. For this we have the following measures:
e-mailing the volunteer upon selection the Project InfoPack with all necessary details; setting up Skype interviews for questions and answers and to clarify any aspects of the service/project/organisation/hosting community;
setting up a Facebook group, project coordinator and selected volunteers, to have easy, constant, and informal communication as well;
ensuring all needed medical care, should it be the case, for this we will make sure that Cigna insurance has been activated before their departure;
making sure they take an active part in all necessary trainings such as Predeparture meeting and in at least 1 event to disseminate project results, upon their return home;
continuous guiding for the volunteers before, during and after their service project period; easing their integration process into the life of our community through session with their qualified mentors, taking part in multicultural activities - food evenings, dances and traditions, thematic parties -, socializing with local young people and getting to know the other EVS volunteers from our city, region and country;
offer them a city map with highlighted points for police stations, hospitals, banks, exchange offices.
All the participants will be hosted in an area with little or no criminality. For any critical situation all volunteers will receive upon arrival a list with the emergency including all phone numbers and the contact details of their mentors and coordinators. Volunteers will have free access to internet connection, cells for national calls and flexible working hours. Volunteers will be inducted with the health and safety policies in AIST and have access to safety equipment. The tasks will be carried out in locations with no risk to their integrity.
Service description
AIST has successfully managed to establish a solid partnership with six other promoters that will act as Sending organizations, to make sure that service is complying with all the qualitative criteria of the EVS Charter. All aspects regarding the project have been thoroughly discussed between partners, and clear tasks and responsibilities have been agreed upon, covering actions for all phases of this project. The service activities will be carried out according with a learning plan for each of the volunteers and will put special emphasis on non-formal learning, European awareness and interculturality. There will be a ‘win – win’ situation coming from the interactions between the EVS volunteers and the community, as all parties will benefit from each other’s experience and expand their horizons through interactions in a wider multicultural and European context.
Workshops - Cultural week/country
Each of the EVS volunteers will hold a weekly workshop in their mother tongue, for interested persons to learn about the culture and civilization of their region and country, and to unemployed youth or potential immigrants, to increase their chances to get a job in the country or abroad.
Linguistic support:
1 hour of Romanian language/week
1 hour of Romanian culture and civilization/week
Throughout the project duration, our EVS volunteers will aquire solid educational skills, and in the same time improve their knowledge on non-formal education. They will have the option to choose from a wide range of activities that our organization implements, with the help of our qualified team of staff and volunteers. The EVS volunteers are more than welcomed to bring their ideas on how to best organise these activities and thus play an active part in their conception and implementation.
The following methods have been selected in order to support their learning process:
- intercultural games and sessions, such as: living library, where each of them will be a ‘book’ and thus interact and exchange ideas in order to combat pre-judegements and also get fisrt hand knowledege on other youth’s values and culture, and on the host community
- multicultural workshops on cooking, dance and music, traditions within the host community
- workshops in arts and crafts, music, educational drama for children and youth
- language clubs and classes to teach their mother tongue
- forum theatre and labirint theatre on topics of their own choice
- flash mobs, street animation in open air events and festivals
- public speaking, debates and photovoice on European topics and youth related issues
- sports and mountaineering to promote heatlthy life styles and treasure hunts for cultural awareness,
thus playing an active part in the life of our organisation and of the community as well.
The EVS volunteers will work on average seven hours every day and have two days off every weekend. Also, they will benefit from a monthly holiday of two days. Their Romanian lessons will be taught by professional teachers and will be take place twice a week, in sessions of one and a half hours each.
All our EVS volunteers will be hosted in good and safe housing conditions in Baia Mare, the capital city of the county of Maramureş. AIST will provide volunteers with monthly food allowance to cover all meals and also free bikes for their local transport. Our organisation has loads to offer both in terms of learning opportunities working alongside our staff and volunteers and from the interaction with the children and youth that are benefiting from our programmes. During and at the end of the service, following discussions on the learning achievements with the mentor, each volunteer shall be guided and fully supported to receive their YouthPass Certificate, AIST staff will take good care of this procedure.