3 Vacancies for Project in Slovakia
* Location: Spania Dolina, Slovakia
* Start: 01/06/2012
* End: 31/05/2013
*
The projects will take place in village of Špania Dolina, located 12 kilometers north of town Banská Bystrica. Špania Dolina is a small mountain village having around 150 permanent inhabitants and maybe 100 more cottage owners, who spend there weekend and holidays. Village is best known for copper mines, which promoted village on European level few hundred years ago. Mining has stopped in year 1888, and since then, village has been shrinking and declining. Today, village has a great tourism potential, though not fully exploited yet.
Nearest town is Banská Bystrica, the centre of central Slovakia, with around 80 000 inhabitants. In the region, there are many high schools as well as Matej Bell University with 10 000 students. Banská Bystrica offers a lot of possibilities for young people. It is surrounded by beautiful hills known for hiking in summer and skiing in winter (Nízke Tatry, Veľká Fatra, Poľana, Kremnické vrchy). In its surrounding, not more than 50 kilometers, there are historically and culturally interesting cities, such as Zvolen, Kremnica, Banská Štiavnica and Brezno.
EVS environment – volunteers will live together in a rented house or apartment, having possibility of preparing meals or dining in local restaurant. After adoption time (meeting and getting known local activists, municipality officials, co-workers) they will attend Slovak language classes to have basic understanding of the language. Further they will be included in everyday life of the organisation, helping with routine duties and tasks. We will try to include them in all undergoing projects. Mentor will be engaged to help them in adoption period or any crisis solving.
Volunteers will become integral part of the organisation. They will have specific tasks and roles and this will help them to get daily working routine and habits, which might have been a problem before, if coming from unemloyed period of time. They will become a team member and will experience teamwork, which will raise their selfvalue. They will learn different new techniques and skills from other team members. Socially, they will live with other volunteers together and this will help them to raise social skills. Culturally, they will learn new language and experience totally different culture and society. This could move them forward in intercultural understanding.
Tasks
Activities in which volunteers will be envolved will be splitted in two parts. One group would be manual/physical activities, mainly concerned with preservation of old mines and surroundings and second group would be office/mental activities. We will try to have a split of 50:50. Typical working week should have not more than 30 hours and volunteers will be involved also in afterwork life. We will try to adapt them into local relations with people. Here is example of typical working week: Monday: staff meeting, web administration, language course Tuesday: restoration day/ out in location Wednesday: planning day, preparation of workcamps, volunteering promotion activities Thursday: restoration day/ out in location Friday: intergenerational activities, language course Everyday: volunteers will help to run community center, assisting executive staff in different activites Restoration activities will be located on “Maximilián” access tunnel in Špania Dolina. Currently, tunnel is not open for public, quiet in bad shape. We will try to clean it up from rubbish, make access pathway from main street and with cooperation with municipality and other NGOs will make new “door” to tunnel and build up information table with navigation. Volunteering promotion activities will be based on visits of universities and high schools, having discussion panels with students. Further we plan to visit radios and TVs to promote volunteering also this way. EVS volunteers will be „live“ example and inspiration for those who might be interested. We plan to write also articles to different magazines for youth and create internet forums for discussion over volunteering. Web administration includes finding placements for volunteering or other youth mobility activities, placing them into web database, communicating with parters, etc. Staff meetings, planning, preparation of workcamps is a team work where all meet and discuss all daily issues or plan future activities. This includes also individual work of writing project applications, administrating running projects, evaluating past projects. Intergenerational activities are done in partner senior community center in Banská Bystrica. Community center ŠD is seasonly run (summer) center, where is intension to have a combined office and community information center. Language course would be held at least twice a week
Criteria
Most important thing of the volunteers’ profile is openess and honesty. We will try to search for volunteers that would be active and willing to learn new things. Everything is possible to learn, so we will not insist on special skills or abilities. Preferably, volunteers who like manual work would be selected, as at least half of the project would be outside on location.
Procedure
In case of interest, pls send your CV, short motivation letter and photo by email Due to numerous applications, we will contact only selected volunteers!!!
Details:
Themes: Heritage protection, Rural development, European awareness
Targets: Local CommunityPosted by: Ivan
22.01.2012, 14:15
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