Topic:
Education
Venue:
Berlin
Duration:
12 months
Introduction
FEZ-Berlin is the largest non-profit children, youth and family centre in Europe. FEZ offers creative games, fun, and recreation together with a multitude of unique activities in the fields of European education, sustainable learning, culture, art, drama, music, media, ecology, technology, astronautics, a children’s museum, educational games, international and multicultural youth activities. FEZ is incorporated as an extracurricular educational organisation into the programmes of day-care centres, schools and youth organisations. Projects such as the language and cultural themeweeks add a substantial contribution to the European process of unification, exposing the children, youth and families to the cultures and lifestyles of the different European nations. Educational themeweeks to world religions, multi-lateral youth meetings offering programmes for up to 150 participants in business education, European future, intercultural learning are just a part of the multifacettet programme FEZ offers all year round. Each year an estimated 1 million people visit FEZ. 85 employees supported ba approx. 15 interns and (European) volunteers as well as 100 external trainers per month realize the numerous projects offered in FEZ.
Motivation and EVS experience
With a wide range of European and international projects FEZ-Berlin pursues in particular the goal of increasing the knowledge of other countries and cultures fostering intercultural meetings and seminars on a multitude of topics. Within this framework we would like to offer the possibility to European volunteers to spend one year in Germany while assisting and partially running aspects of the international programmes as well as becoming acquainted with the country and its culture. At the same time we expect from the volunteers an enriching support in particular within the international projects. Medium-term we hope that regular European assignments will give FEZ-Berlin a far reaching network of organizations for the realization of common project. FEZ Berlin has taken part in the EVS-programme since March 2011 as coordinating- and host organisation. Since then two volunteers have worked for one year in the European and internatinal department and have supported our team. After some organisational changes and improvements we are now in the third year of the EVS and are big fans of the programme. We would like to continue the EVS in our institution and also develop it futher.
Project environment
The Children’s and Youth Activity Centre in the FEZ- Berlin (KJfz)
The KJfz is one of the largest and most prominent institutions in all of Europe for supplementary courses and extracurricular activities for young people. Years of practical experience in political, European, cultural and technical youth education, as well as in international work brings tens of thousands of young people between the ages of 12-21 years to the multifaceted programmes of the KJfz. Project days, workshops, discussion rounds and expert talks, national and international meetings, exhibitions and competitions are only some of the activities they find here. Fundamentally, it is the agenda of the centre to pass on knowledge (capacity building), to advance and foster the talents and capacities of young people through practical application, as well as to motivate the civil duty of the young people to embrace life-long
learning. Another focus we lay strong emphasis upon is the work with young children and families. Target groups as well as the players of the youth centre are, on the one hand, those students who make use of the extracurricular possibilities of the KJfz as a place of learning and who want to apply their knowledge gained in school classes by extension and application through practical work. On the other hand, we invite young people to configure their free time with a range of high quality activity.
The KJfz is unique in Europe as a multi-divisional centre which allows young people to choose from a wide spectrum of activities. The activities that run with a high profile are:
Socio-political work with young people such as, for example, developmental and political education in the form of global learning, as well as participatory projects and international youth congresses orientated towards political and creative modules. These modules allow the young people to interact with the social processes of our times.
Cultural youth work with focus on music, dance, theatre/theatre pedagogy, circus, arts and crafts, and media art Technical youth work in the fields of ecology, information technology and multimedia, technical application, model building, astronautics, natural sciences, and experimentation.
The programmes are conceived by a versatile and qualified team of the KJfz, often in co-orperation with many diverse national and international partners. Young people are also actively invited to be involved as players in the conception, preparation and processing of the programmes. The KJfz prefers the use of the method of participation: to invite the individual to partake actively, to gather personal experiences, to create a dialogue and partnership oriented towards multi-cultural and inter-religious meetings, the authenticity of the acting player, and an open and tolerant climate for talks and discussion.
Location: The KJfz lies in the south-east of Berlin in the district Treptow-Köpenick and is easily accessible by public transportation as well as by private vehicles in about 30 minutes from the city (Alexanderplatz/ Kurfürstendamm). The distance to the airport Berlin-Schönefeld is also about 20 minutes drive.
The KJfz is situated in the middle of a park and can be easily approached by public transportation such as the city train, streetcar and bus. There are plenty of free of charge parking places available for cars.
Area: 13.000 sqm useable area
As part of a team of ca. 85 employees, a small team works on and develops the international projects and affairs manages youth meetings (business education, intercultural learning), international educational themeweeks (language, culture, religion), school company fairs, youth and youth worker exchanges, and weekend festivities. These are funded by the Berlin senate, the EU – Youth in Action Pro grams 1.1/3.1/3.2/5.1, the European Commission directly and at times private sponsors. We supervise a youth participation group and run an annual mutlilateral youth meet with them as well as training programmes to facilitate their career objectives. On a regular basis trainees and interns join our office for three months to two years. For all these activities the national and international networking plays a crucial factor for the smooth running and consistent development of all programmes. District and state councils, schools (primary, secondary,
vocational, and technical) and foreign embassies, cultural institutions, international youth organisations, specialists (expert and peer-to-peer), the European Commission, the German Foreign Min istry and international partners from schools, city councils, and youth services are some of our main partners for our projects.
Proposed activities
FEZ offers various possibilities of acquiring knowledge and experience and fostering talents within the range of international, cultural, technical, ecological and media children and youth education as well as management skills. The volunteer will have in principle the possibility of cooperating in all these ranges to get an overview of the possibilities. This is why FEZ is interested in lon g-term volunteers as the range and scope of the participation level is quite far reaching.
The volunteer will directly work within the international project environment. The spectrum covers among other things international youth meetings and congresses, national and international language and culture events for pupils, and full-scale events as for example the annual European Festival.
As part of the project team the volunteer will develop his or her own area of responsibility within the project management (conception, research, production of and co-operation with (international) partners, organization, execution, accounting, documentation, evaluation) to cooperate within a team, while acquiring organization and communication skills.
In coordination with the interests of the volunteer we will specify concrete projects. Concrete tasks would be for example to search, structure and co-ordinate the network of partners. Beyond that the volunteers can propose, develop and run their own educational projects for children and/or young people as part of our themeweeks and festivities. After a thorough training the volunteers can be responsible for smaller and bigger aspects of the international project management. Of course the volunteer can count on the consultation and support of all the FEZ coworkers.
Profile of the volunteers:
aged 18-30
open for one female volunteer (because we already have 2 male volunteers) with B1 knowledge of German and basic office work skills. The work consists of mostly creative and educational workshops withschool classes, families and children from Berlin, this is why a fair lever of German is a must.
The majority of the work is focussed on oral and written communication in the form of project management and direct educational work. The volunteer should therefore have basic knowledge of the German language and have the intention to raise their language skills during the service. The better these skills are at the start, the more interesting and various the tasks will be. English language skills are helpful for cooperation at the international youth meetings and congresses, but not a prerequisite.
Beyond that the volunteers should be team players, be able to work independently, be open-minded, have PC knowledge (Micorsoft Office, Internet), have empathy with and tolerance for our target group: children, youth and families. You cane expect to participate in the organisation of international cultural and political education for children, youth and families in the form of themeweeks, youth meetings, and events.
Age between 18-30, Duration of the EVS: 12 months.
How to apply
Building Bridges Association members will have preference, please enroll to the association here.
For the selection of the volunteers we will need:
– Europass CV with picture (made in the last month)
– Motivational letter, writing that your sending organisation will be “Building Bridges”. We ask all candidates to send a specific letter of motivation – why they want to volunteer with us rather than just a general EVS one.
Remember to write in the motivation letter that your sending institution is “Asociación Building Bridges”.
All documents written in english you can attach below with subject “EVS Germany FEZ. YOUR NAME. YOUR SURNAME» and sent to asociacionbbARROBAgmail.com
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