Dates
Place
Hosting organisation
The aims of the project are diversify the daily lives of young people, to encourage them to self-initiative, to allow to see new ways to improve ourselves and to educate, promote meaningful leisure activities, develop civic sense and get to know other cultures.
We are planning to host volunteers from 1. september 2016, to 31. may 2017.
Planned time nine month.
Volunteers will work with young people by organizing various size measures ranging from minor activities within Youth center, such as culinary afternoons, game evenings, sport afternoons, and finally a major collaborative activities with the Youth Council, which involve a wider number of participants. Therefore, the project will affect not only the center of the young, but also society as a whole. We will also go to schools, and show them how we work, what we are doing. We will tell children how volunteers work here in youth center. Once in the month volunteers will go to visit our colleagues in Sēmes youth center, it's near Tukums. It will help to make volunteer work more popular not only in city, but in near regions too.
The project will take place in Tukums, which is located in western part of Latvia, 20 km from the Baltic sea and 65 km from our capital city Riga. Weather in Tukums and Latvia is similar as in the rest of North Europe, there are four pronounced seasons winter, spring, summer and autumn. Winters are with snow, can be very long (from November till March) and the temperature drops below zero (sometimes even under -25C°), and in opposite summers are mostly sunny, but can be as hot, as mild.
Tukums is the administrative center of the region consisting of 10 local authorities with developed sport and culture facilities. The population of Tukums is approximately 20,000 persons (or one third of the population of the region).
As a result of the project:
– Two volunteers will be working at the Tukums district youth initiative centre for
9 months;
– YC will have created at least two new activities that would take place on a regular basis;
– volunteers will have actively collaborated with the Youth council and together will have organized several events;
– at least two volunteering work promotion events will have taken place;
– two mentors and one Latvian language teacher will be involved in the project.
Main information about our organization
Our organizations name is Tukuma county Multifunctional Youth Initiative Centre. It is financially supported by the Swiss Confederation and Tukums municipality. Our youth center is opened since december 2011. Tukuma county Multifunctional Youth Initiative Centre is municipal authorities department carrying out the work with youth.
It aims to improve young people's quality of life, promoting young people's initiative and participation in decision-making.
Our organization is only a bit older than 5 years, but we have quite good experience in EVS projects and Erasmus+ youth exchange projects too.
We have take part in two European Voluntary Service projects. In the first project «Active together!»; we welcomed two German girls – volunteers, who with their initiative and renewable practicing attracted youth center more and more interested.
In the second project "Together we can more!" we also received two volunteers, one German girl and a guy from Spain. German girl was very artistic, and that's why she attracted a lot of young people to the Youth center, who were also interested in the arts and different types of creative self-expression. Spanish guy was very attractive, and as he very well knew Spanish, Italian and English, to his language training came a lot of different people from young age, to even people in very old age. And that's all because he, as a teacher was a very charismatic personality.
We also implement two projects in Erasmus+ Youth exchange program in our city.
First was called "Together in film". Second project called "Life is my choice". It was about young people drug using problems and healthy lifestyle.
We also have participated in Youth exchange projects in other countries. Last one was in Turkey, in Sakarya city. It was about social entrepreneurship. We learned there how to generate new ideas, and how to make interesting advertising for your product.
Now we have accumulated an interesting experience. In next few years we would like to write more EVS and Youth exchange projects, so we could be able to implement many other great ideas.
Currently in youth center there are 3 employees– methodologist of youth affairs, coordinator and youth worker. But we have also three interest education teachers who teach to our youngsters guitar, animation production and wood-carving. In
Youth center also works Tukums Youth television. Since we have developed good cooperation with them, in each project they are happy to help us with the video filming for our activities and project advertising campaigns. Here also actively works Tukums county youth council. They help us organize all big celebrations, such as Christmas, Valentines day, Easter and Knowledge day in first September.
Information about the place, where volunteers will stay and do their activities.
Youth center is based in Tukums town center, near by Tukums Ice hall, which is one of the most dynamic social life center. There are going kids, youth, adults, tourists, sportsman and so on.
The volunteers will have a very important role in organizing every day activities with young people. They will introduce with his/her country and will help understand and strengthen European awareness.
The volunteers would be involved in the different sport activities, like in basketball, in street gymnastics and in dance and music improvisation, as well as in unformal language learning, cooking and in art or music lessons (guitar etc.)
Youth center have established cooperation with different organizations and we are expecting from volunteers the flexibility to involve in activities with Tukums Special Boarding School students, Blind Association members and with people with special needs.
From volunteers we are expecting trust, respect, openness, high level of involvement, creativity, discipline, collaborative attitude and the understanding.
Profile of the volunteer.
We would be glad to host volunteers between 18 and 30 years old, socially active, open minded, self-dependent, with an interest to share experience and talents with local young people in Tukums and who has real motivation to be involved in EVS project and work in our youth center. Ability to teach any major European language, musical instrument and cooking is preferable.
Recruitment process will be open and transparent – we will accept and consider every application. We will try to make some dialogue via e-mail and/ or skype with candidate. For us would be important to get to know volunteers' expectations. And if we will see potential in this cooperation, we will choose this person.
We are open to cooperate with Sending Organization of any type but it would be great to cooperate with organizations who are specialized in youth.
Reimbursement
Travel costs are (for one person, in both directions):
Spain: 360.00 euro
If your ticket price is more than this, you need to pay yourself rest.
In order to get your money back, please pay attention to the following procedure:
1) keep all the tickets you get to prove your expenses (bus tickets, train tickets, electronic flight ticket, travel agency reservations, etc.);
2) keep all your flight boarding passes (outward and return);
Remember! We cannot reimburse you if we do not receive the details and proofs of your expenses and travel costs.
During the project we will ask you to provide printed copies of photocopy of your ID card or Passport.
Once we will have all originals, the Financial Department will analyze the documents and do the banks transfer of the expenses.
Banks
Currency in Latvia is Euro.
Phone calls
The national code for Latvia is 371. If you call from abroad dial +371 (…)
About Latvia
http://www.latvia.travel/en/getting-know- latvia-and- latvians
About Tukums
Selection process
Building Bridges Association members will have preference, please enroll to the association here.
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)
– 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”.
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