About the Project
The idea for this EVS project came up during several meeting of the coordinating organisation in Southern Caucasus with local organisations that expressed their interests and needs to host EVS volunteers in their organisations.The needs that had been communicated were very similar to each other. The organisations mentioned that for their own work and for the community they are working in external knoowledge and input of new working methods and problem solving strategies are needed. Furthermore, a major point was also that volunteers from programme countries, where volunteering is much more spreaded than in EECA region, could promote the idea of active civil participation in local conerns to young people in oder to raise their motivation to be involve in grass roots projects that are working on the improvement and development of the situation of young people in their closest environement.
Three of the hostng organisations are already experienced with volunteers while two of them do not have any experiences with hosting EVS volunteers. We consider this combination as an davantage for our project, because it enables a internal learning process among the hosts and it enlarges at the same time the involvement of new organisations into the EVS community.
Two reasons are very obviously and motivated us to plan and implement this EVS project, where volunteers from Programme countries will make their EVS projects in Southern Caucasus, in hosting organisations running youth clubs, non-formal education programmes and cultural events for children and young people:
At first to mention is the impact of the volunteers on the local community development and the awareness of the local public for voluntary work. The volunteers? contribution to the local youth projects, in which they will be involved, will not only consist of the concrete workshops and other activities they will implement, but as well of the indirect impact on the surrounding people of the community. We believe, that by these EVS projects an impulse can be given to the local public of the hosting places according a higher awareness for the importance of civil society and personal responsibility for the own local community. Until now particularly this consciousness and self-responsibility is missing, even when step by step raising, in the countries of Southern Caucasus as a heritage of the latest past (communist regime, wars and economical breakdown).
Second, the volunteer?s personal development is a main aim of our project. Due to their work with children and young people, the volunteers will have a great possibility to learn a lot about youth work in Caucasus. They will improve personal and working abilities and enlarge their knowledge about a different country and a different culture. Particularly because the Southern Caucasus was during the history influenced by European, Arabic and Asian impacts, the experiences for the volunteers there will be quite interesting and different for them.
In addition, a participation in several youth activities and the realisation of a personal own created project will show the volunteers, that they can deal with specific tasks successfully. This will strengthen their self-confidence and self-responsibility, which are both very important characteristics for their future life.
As an additional objective we want to reached with this EVS project to build up partnerships between the sending and hosting organisations from programme and partner countries for future EVS projects and other kinds of international co-operation aimed to raise intercultural understanding and tolerance among young people form different countries.
According to the above-mentioned aspects of the project, the objectives are as follows:
For the hosting community
- Contribute to civil society and local community development
- To raise awareness for voluntary work
- To improve the local youth project with new, external inputs (methods, approaches etc.)
- To provide non-formal education for disadvantaged young people
- To raise intercultural understanding and tolerance
- widen the volunteer?s horizon and give life experiences
- to contribute to the personal development of the volunteers (self-responsibility, self-confidence, tolerance)
- to provide them with soft and hard skills for their future working life
- To raise awareness for voluntary work and the importance of an active civil society
- To raise intercultural understanding
- to build partnership on EVS and to create a network on EVS a hosting and sending organisations
- to exchange knowledge and experiences on volunteering