Voluntarism

Alicja Szpot-Rożnowska

STRIM association is working in the framework of the European Voluntary Service with hosting projects since 2002. Every year from October till June we welcome about twenty young people from UE and partners countries who work on the long term projects in different kindergartens, youth clubs and youths associations in Krakow.

The theme of all our EVS projects is the development cooperation and European awareness by intercultural learning. Objectives of our project is to give to European volunteers the possibility to develop their competences and skills through the work in the Polish educational institutions, to create an atmosphere of international cooperation in the Hosting Organizations and to create the opportunities for intercultural learning for children and youth. Basically the volunteers working in the Hosting Organizations  have two main tasks: taking active participation in daily life of their organization and promoting their own cultures and countries, by providing their own small cultural projects. The connection between all those volunteers is STRIM Association itself. One volunteer working directly in the Strim Association is responsible of the integration of volunteers in the local community, their cultural activation as well as communication and promotion of the results of the project. The Strim volunteer is responsible also to write down and putting on his blog all constructive outcomes of the projects. Volunteers in Krakow have also the possibility to spend their leisure time together, discuss their working methods, daily work, cultural differences, ideas and reflections. They take active participation in all national activities organized by Strim as integration meetings, evaluations, promotion of the EVS, Volunteers Day etc. Each volunteer is under the care of Polish evsfriend, and is learning polish language in the tandem with polish native speaker. The results of this EVS project are presented in the publication or exposition et the end of the project.

 For more information about Youth in Action Program visit http://ec.europa.eu/youth/program/sos/vh_evs_en.html