Positive attitudes in EVS

The volunteer should take an active role in setting up her/his EVS project together with the promoters, and this should be encouraged by the Sending, Host and Coordinating Organization.

The volunteer must respect the rules and the organizational structure of the Host Organization. The volunteer must also abide by the laws in force in the host country.

The volunteer must keep the Host Organization informed about her/his whereabouts during the period of service.

While abroad, the volunteer should give the Sending Organization regular feedback on her/his experience and must evaluate the overall project with the Sending Organization upon her/his return.

Activities:

The volunteers will be facilitators of outdoor and indoor activities for children and youngsters who face a bad social background or who face discrimination. Through the activities organized the volunteers will help the youngsters to overcome the barriers they face, to develop socially and as well to develop some skills and competences which will help them succeed more easy in future life.

Volunteers as well will be responsible to select, develop, prepare, implement and evaluate all single activities they will organize with children. Each activity has to be developed after a previous plan which clearly shows the outcomes and learning objectives of the activity.

Volunteers will be supported by the Hosting and Coordinating organization to develop own initiatives during the stage.

One major responsibility of the volunteers will be as well reporting, once in every two weeks each volunteers will need to fill in it’s activity report and as well some other document which at the end of the project will help in the generation of the youth pass.

Volunteers are free to chose he games or methods they are using during their activity, but each of them will necessarily have a learning outcome and will have to be organized taking in consideration the principles of non-formal education.

Working hours:

The volunteers will work approx. 6 hours/day, 5 days/week (Saturday and Sunday are free except the cases of weekend activities but the volunteers will receive free days in compensation during the week). Also, each EVS volunteer will have 2 free days / month, but the free days shouldn’t interfere with different events.

The working hours as well include the hours of work with youngsters and also the preparation hours of the activities.

The Mentor:

Each volunteer will have a mentor, which will be available for his needs. The mentor will organize meeting with all volunteers he is in charge of and as well he will be available for single sessions in case the volunteer asks for this. The mentor will organize several activities with the volunteers which will help them: reflect about the learning outcomes of the stage, to realize the things learned during the project, to overcome barriers, to integrate better in the local community, etc.

Also the mentor will ask for reports of reflection groups that will teach the volunteers to organize between themselves.

The local facilitator:

The activity facilitator will help the volunteer organize his time properly and will oversee all the volunteers activities. He will divide the volunteers in working groups, will organize weekly meetings to discuss activities and plans of volunteers, will accompany the volunteers for the 1^st times at the activity places and will offer support them where it is needed.

The facilitator as well will overview the whole activity of the volunteers and will ask them for their activity reports. He will most of time with the volunteers from the whole group.

The language classes:

Volunteers will participate to language classes over the whole period of stage. The classes will be organized once a week most probably in groups, as you are a lot of students. Each volunteer will receive a language written special course. The course is specially written for EVS volunteers who are having a long stage in Romania.

The hosting place:

There will be 2-3 persons/room; depends on how big the room in which you will be hosted is.

You will have access to bathrooms (common bathroom and showers/floor), kitchen (1 kitchen fully equipped) and other utilities like laundry room.

The hosting place will be in the city of Arad, close to public transportation or even the activity place.

Some strict rules regarding over night sleeping will have to be followed as well as for pets, as usually owners who rent places do not allow them.

The facilitator together with the mentor will establish some common daily life rules to help the volunteers live and share common things. This will help especially the volunteers who for the first time are away from home or did not live together with other persons before.

The office:

Volunteers will have an office for their own, which we will try to arrange near to the apartments or at least to the working places.

In the office there will be the working place of the volunteers where they will have internet access, some computers which they will have to share for working, checking e-mail, writing reports and preparing their next activity.

Also in the office they will have some necessary material like paper, colors, pens etc.

Meetings with the mentor, the local facilitator and as well Romania classes will be held in the office. Due to the fact that you are 30 volunteer you will have to share one office, most probably we will establish a schedule for you to use the office so in this case it will be not crowded.

Food & Allowance:

The volunteers will receive a monthly food allowance and they can either buy food, either cook for themselves.

The monthly food allowance will be 100 Euro – paid at the 1^st of each stage month in case it is a working day and as well 60 Euro allowance. Together this amount in RON (Romanian currency) represents the minimum salary in Romania. All of our previous volunteers received the same amount of money and they managed very well.

Local transportation:

In case the accommodation will be more than 25 minutes by walk from the working place of volunteers, the hosting organization will provide bikes or season ticket for the public transportation.

Luggage:

Please keep in mind you will stay for 10 months in Romania; you will need clothing for all seasons. Please do not forget you personal belongings or stuff you may need and can not be found in Romania I am referring here mostly to medicine, which in Romania can be bough just in doctor recipe in most of the cases and as well it can have different name than in your hometown.

Most probably all of you who decide to travel by place will have a 20 – 23 kg bag and as well a small bag which you can take into the plane for 8 kg, included in the ticket price. For volunteers traveling by bus, train or car they will not have problems with the weight of the luggage.

“ Don’t misunderstand us, but we have to tell you also about the behavior. Please take into consideration that the people from Romania are very hospitable, they are always welcoming their guests. But there is one aspect, though: when you meet people from a different culture than some of you are used to, it may take a while to integrate fully. So, our suggestion is for you to be a little reserved at the beginning and to have patience until you get to know the people because an action of yours may have an impact on the whole group.

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The trainings:

All the volunteers will follow a serious of mandatory trainings we and the National Agency in Romania is organizing and as well we can organize a very large number of trainings for the personal development o the volunteers in case they are asking for it and if they are interested.

1. Introductory training – will be organized in the first weeks after the volunteers arrival: it will help the volunteer to integrate better in the group, to get to know the team, the other volunteers, the activities and the place, the city, and in details the duties of the project as well as the schedule. It usually take up to 2 weeks, daily for 5-7 hours, depending on how particular the activities are and how many details or specific skills the volunteers need to gain in the training before the activity.

2. On- arrival training – will be organized by the National Agency in Romania in the 1^st month after the volunteer’s arrival.

3. Non-formal and animation – will be organized before or after the on-arrival training by one of our professional trainers inside the team. The training will help the volunteers to understand the aspects of non-form education as well they will know how to choose, prepare, implement and evaluate the activities they will organize with the youngsters.

4. Mid – Term evaluation – will be organized by the National Agency in Romania and will help evaluate the EVS stage at his middle.

Besides these trainings that we already established all the time in liaison with the volunteers we can organize specific training, depending on their needs. But the volunteers need to really be interested in the topic they ask and at least 7-10 volunteers if not all have to attend the entire course we organize.

The Coordinating organization:

“Asociaţ ia Ofensiva Tinerilor” is an organisation that adopted, from the beginning of its activity until today, various themes in different projects, most of them involving youth. The members and collaborators of “Asociaţ ia Ofensiva Tinerilor” involved in their projects people belonging to different ethnicity and ages for promoting cultural diversity, responsibility in the community and promoting decisional transparency in public administration. Also, our organization involved in some programs of Corporate Reasonability during time.

The association was founded in 2004 and changed its board in summer 2010 but never stop it’s activity in the youth filed. Since we started our work we organized project under the frame of Youth in Action Program, under some pilot calls of the European Commission (AMICS, EYV 2011, etc.) and under yearly different national and local funding opportunities.

Regarding youth mobility and activities from Youth in Action Program, our association had been partner in youth exchange projects, training courses, seminars and partner building activities in different countries all over the world.

The target group of “Asociaţ ia Ofensiva Tinerilor” is mainly youth between 13-31 years.

Trough the years we hosted and sent around 250 EVS volunteers (90% of them in projects we applyed). From the foundation of our organization we assume activities that refer at local communities, fact that lead to signing partnership agreement with non-governmental organizations and various institutions, depending of the type of project that was to be implemented.

The Hosting partners:

As in our city we are several Youth association that are working as a consortium together, we usually decide that for our EVS projects to involve several hosting partners who have the same activity field. In all our projects we are working together, this means that our team grow strong together and cooperates during the process of implementation.

Above you already were reading who will be your responsible such as the mentor and the local facilitator but as well you will have the possibility during your stage to get to know the rest of our team and as well to involve in each of our associations activities. In this way you have more activities to choose from and you are able to benefit from more unique experiences.