SVE plaza en centro juvenil de Padua (Italia)

Spazio Europa (Europe-Space)

Standard activities:

– participation to guidance seminars and meetings addressed to youth (target of the Erasmus plus programme – in particular secondary schools students) bringing testimonies of their EVS experience;

-organisational support for the activities of the hosted Youth Exchanges,

– support in the dissemination of the possibilities offered by the EVS programme, for instance joining theoperator during the individual or group informative sessions.

Social Services

Standard activities:

• Recreational and animation activities with elderlies;

• After school activities for underage people.

We will value the volunteers’ involvement within the Social Services sector on the basis of their personal attitudes, and taking in account the effective possibility to activate the services. As an example, the elderlies assistance service will depend on the requests received from the families in need through the Social Worker, and on the kind of disease of the person. Regarding the beginning and frequency of the after school activities we will have to take in account the school closing periods.

Activities proposed by volunteers:

• front-office hours extension for reaching more youth;

• workshops realisation (i.e. music, recycling, photography, cultural tours within the city);

• individual or group language courses;

• intercultural evening organisation to introduce the volunteer’s country of origin or project.

• testimonies about the European Voluntary Service experience to students;

• promotion of meetings about the mobility area at Universities and youth aggregative centers;

• realisation of intercultural initiatives and collaboration to the dissemination of texts or audio-video material about EVS experiences, also in collaboration with other European youth;

• project writing for intercultural exchanges which could involve the volunteer’s country of origin or other sending organisation.

This project offers to volunteers the chance to test their skills in two principal fields:1) promotion of cultural initiatives and services addressed to youth;

2) youth active participation to social life, due to services to targeted to children and elderlies and, in general, people in need.

In respect to the above mentioned proposed activities, we identify the following learning objectives:

Animation: to acquire organisational skills in offering a service (i.e. supporting the management of the informative front office answering to the users’ needs; promoting initiatives as photography, culture and language, or drawing courses; realising a cultural event which involves local youth).

Info-youth: to improve language competencies and develop relational skills (i.e. participating to a tandem learning program in their mother tongue with youth from other European countries);

Europe-space: to experiment teamwork with other young people (i.e. collaborating to the organisation of a hosted Youth Exchange or Training Course); to contribute in the diffusion of an intercultural sensitivity within the local area (i.e. bringing their testimonies as European Volunteers to schools or Universities, or realising an intercultural evening addressed to local people in order to tell about the habits of their Countries of origin).

Social services: to experience the value of solidarity; to develop listening skills and competencies in support of people who live difficult situations (from a socio-economical, psychological or physical point of view); to learn about and inform of the interventions which the public administration addresses to people in need.

The amount of working hours requested to volunteers will be of 35 hours per week, depending on the effective activities organised by the services. Therefore in some period of the year it could be asked a higher commitment for the implementation of the proposals within an area of service, which will be balanced with a lighter load of work in another ambit (i.e. considering a 35 hours schedule, 15 hours of activities in the Animation area could be balanced with 15 hours of after school for the Social services area, plus 5 hours of tandem learning with info-youth). The schedule will be jointly agreed between volunteers and the services responsible and will take in consideration the commuting time to move from a working seat to another.

The volunteers will be hosted in an apartment rented by the Municipality of Padova and situated a few minutes from the historic down town and the activities locations. They will not be lodged in community houses and therefore will have to follow only the ordinary co-habitation rules and those established by the block of flats (silence hours, bed room and common spaces cleaning, etc.). The Office will work as a mediator between volunteers and the landlord in order to facilitate the relationship among them.All the activity premises are situated in spaces regularly served by public means of transportation and easily reachable also with own resources. In order to allow volunteers to be more independent and quick in transferring from one place to another, they are normally assigned a bicycle.

The ideal volunteer for our hosting project should have a strong motivation for the thematic, the objectives and theproposed activities of the project, as well as a marked attitude to interpersonal relationships. Volunteers who have relational attitudes toward children and elderlies, and who are open to meeting and co-operating with youth, will be particularly valued. Availability to commitment and proactivity in taking part to the project are implicit requirements that could facilitate the volunteers’ engagement in the working team, and help them in achieving the project objectives.Eventual past experiences in contexts similar to the ones proposed for the project will be also appreciated.
We suggest a basic knowledge of the Italian language, although it is not a discriminating criteria for the volunteers’ recruitment. On the other hand, the language proficiency can facilitate the volunteers in establishing a relationship with the service users since the very beginning of the activities. The linguistic training which will endure for the whole service duration will be useful to enrich their personal vocabulary and improve their language mastery, allowing the volunteers to feel more confident in their interpersonal relationships with youth and the services co-ordinators.The volunteers selection is open to any youth aged between 18 and 30, female and male. No specific qualification is required, but considering the kind of activities the volunteers will be called to develop, we will positively value the following attitudes:– predisposition to human interpersonal relationship;– good motivation to the project themes and proactivity;

– interest in the projects developed by the distinct areas of engagement;

– adaptation skills and capacity to manage the work schedule and tasks.

How to apply