Be a EuroPEER!
Start date: Jul 1, 2014,
End date: Dec 31, 2015
PROJECT
FINISHED
Youth Centre Villa Elba coordinated the EVS project project Be a EuroPEER! This project hosted young people from Austria, Spain, Romania and Hungary to work with local young people and children. Our area is rural and people mostly lives in small communities with few possibilities to have intrenational contacts. By having international volunteer working together with local people we hope to make multiculturality and internationality as a natural part of young peoples everyday life.
The idea behind the project was to engourage local young people for intercultural communication and show them the possibilities of Erasmus+. The volunteers were active members of the working community and also encouraged to bring their own culture and ideas for making the interaction work in both ways and to make all parties also valor their own culture and values. The volunteers lived and worked in the same conditions as locals do and got to know thoroughly the everyday life in their hosting communities. We also wanted to give volunteers from our partner countries a possibility to learn more and get more (work) experience by participating this project.
We hosted 6 volunteers in this project and young people with fewer opportunities was our main priority. The volunteers were youngsters enthusiastic to learn about other cultures and European realities, creative people with own ideas and motivation to do voluntary work, but they also faced different kind of challenges in their lives: unemployment, low education and social difficulties.
The activities:
Hosting: Youth and Nature Centre Vasatokka, Inari:
Sending: AEGEE-Leon Spain, volunteer Lara Arredondo 27.1-25.6.2015 (5 months)
Sending: Messzelato Egyesület Hungary, volunter György Vigyikan 19.9.2014-17.2.2015 (5 months)
In Vasatokka the volunteers were working together with staff and helped them in outdoor group activities like gps-orienteering, ice fishing, skiing and survival skills and in Arctic Ocean tour.Volunteers also helped in maintenance and in kitchen. The volunteer also helped the organisation to develop the visibility in internet, for example Facebook. The volunteers also helped to make advertisements, decorations, brochures and other marketing materials.
Hosting: Ylivieska Youth department
Sending: Asociacion La Rotllana Spain, volunteer Javier Nache Cotes 09.01-7.10.2015 (9 months)
The volunteer was working with guiding and instructing children and young people in different kind of activities and open evenings. He also organised with other workers different kind of camps for children.
Hosting: Nykarleby Youth and Leisure
Sending: AK Tirol Austria, volunteer Marita Jäger 02.01-29.6.2015 (6 months)
Sending: Centrul de Voluntariat Cluj-Napoca Romania, volunteer Alexandra Oanca 2.2.-29.6.2015 (5 months)
The volunteers helped to arrange discussions and debates at the local high-schools language lessons, helped to organise and lead courses, camps and excursions arranged by the office. In summertime the volunteers worked as a guides at the local museum or work with sport activities, summer camps for children etc. The volunteers also visited different happenings arranged by the Culture & Leisure Office and gave information about their countries and cultures.
Hosting: Ranua Youth department
Sending: Ayuntamiento de Murcia Spain, volunteer Tomas Tomas Valencia 24.3.-23.7.2015 (4 months)
The volunteer worked at Ranua municipality’s youth and sports office and helped to organise new and old events and contributed his knowledge to help and develop activities.
Our project met the programme priorities as we worked with such young people who does not have other possibilities to gain international experiences. We also encouraged young people to actively participate in the society and to take responsibility for themselves and people nearby. Voluntary work was an excellent way to support young people to gain more initiative, to become more indepent and at the same time develop their idea and thoughts about European citizenship. The idea was also to bring internationality into the everyday life of our local youngsters in order to make multiculturality a visible and natural part of their everyday life.