Place
Steyr, Austria
Our youth centre is situated in the beautiful city centre of Steyr, a 39.000 inhabitant town with a lot of schools and an industrial background in the hilly landscape of the alpine foreland. A lot of tourists come to visit the historic town with its old houses and the coinfluence of the two rivers Enns and Steyr. There is also a “university of applied sciences” with a lot of international students. There are also a lot activities for the free time, like different sports clubs (climbing, badminton, athletics, etc.), a dancing school, cinema, theatre etc…
Introduction and dates
We will host one volunteer for the period of beginning September 2016 to beginning of July 2017.
Deadline
Please send your application with motivation letter and CV until 17th of April 2016.
About the youth centre
This youth centre is financed mainly by the catholic church. The aim of the youth centre is to provide a save space for the youngsters where they can spend their free time without any pressure to consume. Another aim is to encourage the empowerment of young people, provide guidance and counselling in the questions that occur on the way from being a child to adulthood and get the youngsters interested in relevant topics of society.
Target group of the youth centre are youngsters between 13 and 19 years old – of all religions.
During the opening times (tuesday-friday 12:30-18:00 on school days) young people can use different leisure time facilities like table tennis, table football, cooking facility, … or talk to the youth leaders about their life and problems. Beside the opening times a lot of projects are organised from the youth leaders, a lot of them are intercultural and international. Also youth groups and school classes come to the youth centre to visit and get to know the facility, sometimes the youth leaders organise a special programme for the youth groups.
About the EVS
The volunteer will be an internationally enriching temporal member of the team. He/she will join the team meetings and supervision. The volunteer will also join us to our regular networking and retraining meetings with youth leaders from other youth centres.
During the opening times (Tuesday-Friday, 12:30-18:00 on school days) he/she will always be present in the youth centre with the youth leaders. The main task during the opening times is “being there” for the young people. Eg. Playing table tennis, offering them a cup of tea, cooking together, giving them the opportunity to talk about what goes on in their life, motivating them to try out new things, games, activities. Beside that the volunteer will help the youth leaders to organise different
projects, events (like excursions to interesting places, creativity workshops, intercultural cooking evenings, video contest, etc.)
The volunteer will have the chance to bring in his/her own personality and culture. Depending on the skills and preferences of the volunteer he/she will be contributing what he/she can/wants to offer. Eg. Organising music workshops for the youngsters, a personal blog, creative decoration for the youth centre, designing flyers for the homepage etc but also use his/her cultural background for a project, like an international evening.
The volunteer will also be in contact with other EVS volunteers from Upper Austria hosted by the “Verein 4YOUgend”, so he/she will be embedded in an international network, get in contact with
other young people and maybe develop a project together.
Learning fields will be informal and non-formal education, personal development, communication with and understanding of other people as well as organising skills and different arts and crafts. If there are good offers (eg from local organisations or from the county) he/she will also have the chance to go on special trainings (e.g. first aid or working with minorities etc.) if wanted.
The volunteer will be motivated to document his learning process in a diary (on paper or with modern media) and will collect them in the end in the Youth Pass.
Profile of the Volunteer
As our target group are youngsters between 13 and 19 we would like the volunteers to be 20 years old when they start the EVS. The volunteer should be open minded and interested in the life
environment of young people, knowing that it can sometimes be a challenge being confronted with their lives and dealing with their questions. Ability for team-work and holding agreements is
important. The volunteer should be eager to bring in his own ideas and abilities and to learn new abilities.
Practical Arrangements
The volunteers will be accommodated in a student hall in which mostly students of the University of Applied Science are living. There are students from Austria and also a lot of foreign students
accomodated there so it will be a good opportunity to get to know other people with the same age in Steyr. The rooms are single rooms with private bathrooms. There is a shared kitchen. The volunteer can also use the kitchen in the youth centre. Concerning catering the volunteer will get a monthly
sum for self-catering.
All important localities (town centre, youth centre, train station, sports hall, cultural ventues) are within 15 minutes walking distance. The volunteer will also be provided a bicycle.
How to apply
Building Bridges members and/or long term unemployed (proved by scanned document) will have preference to this volunteer service.
We will study carefully all application and selected candidates will be invite for Skype interview. The selection of volunteers will take place in the coming weeks.
For the selection of the volunteers we will need:
– Europass CV with picture (made in the last month) with skype name included
– 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. The volunteer is chosen according to his/her motivation and interest to the project and to the activities. It will be paid special attention to cover letters. Remember to write in the motivation letter that your sending institution is “Asociación Building Bridges”.
Please send your documents to asociacionbb@gmail.com before the 17.04.2016 with the subject “EVS_Austria_Steyr.YOUR NAME.YOUR SURNAME”
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