EVS Project in Rome Needs 1 Macedonian Youth

Deadline: 13 February 2013
Open to: youth from Macedonia that value social inclusion and protection of disability rights; knowing some Italian is a benefit
Benefits: experience designing and realizing your own projects through European Voluntary Service and the enriching cultural experience of living in another country

Description

Sezione Laziale della UILDM Onlus from Rome, Italy is looking for one volunteer from Macedonia for an EVS placement in their approved “IntegrACTION” project. The placement is for 12 months and will start on 1 March 2013. Please read carefully the information below before you make the application and if you decide that you can collaborate with them, send them the required documents (the list is provided below) to evs@mladiinfo.com no later than February 13, 2013.

The theme of the project is disability and diversity in general. Each volunteer will be coupled with people with physical disabilities and will be visiting the houses of the people with disabilities and perform “integration” projects. Objectives of each integration project will be defined together with the social workers of the association taking each person’s individual needs into account. With a young kid, the objective might be accompanying him to school or playground; with a teenager can be to go out and walk around Rome together; with an elderly person that could be doing grocery shopping together etc. The overall idea of these integration projects is:

• to support social inclusion of people with disabilities and offer them different opportunities to socialize;
• to raise awareness of the volunteers on the conditions and social, cultural and physical facilitations and limitations that people with disabilities live;
• to provide a space of cultural interaction among people from different backgrounds (not only different countries, but also different socio-economical situations, different age groups, different ability groups etc.) so that both the volunteers and the locals (mainly the receivers of the services) might benefit from the experience.

Each volunteer will have different cases during the week and will be monitored by a team of professionals including social workers, educators and psychologists working on the same case. Besides this main area of work, volunteers will be offering support to different departments of the association based on their interests and skills including:

• Fundraising department: during the year we will organise different fundraising activities for the association and the volunteers will be asked to help in organisation, implementation and evaluation of those activites;
• Communications department: the organisation has a quarterly magazine and a newly established Web Radio. Volunteers will occasionally be asked to write articles, make photos, make broadcasts on topics of their interest.
• Social animation department and Youth Group: the association has an informal Youth Group composed of people with mixed abilities. The volunteers will be asked to organize different activities, weekend  trips etc. in order to communicate the values and opportunities offered by the Youth in Action project to their peers.

Moreover, each volunteer can propose his/her own ideas and initiatives that is in line with the mission and objectives of the organisation and we would create the necessary environment for the volunteers to realise their personal projects to the maximum extent possible.  

Project tasks:

• Implementing integration activities in the houses of people with physical disabilities ;
• Participating in periodic meetings with the integration team to evaluate each case;
• Writing short follow-up reports for the cases;
• Organising and implementing group meetings to promote Youth in Action and EVS;
• Writing articles about volunteering, diversity and disability for the magazine and web site;
• Participating in fundraising events of the organisation. 

You will be living in a volunteer house close to work that you will share with other volunteers like yourself. Do not forget that you might need to share a room with another person. You will be receiving a yearly transport card that you can use in all kinds of local transport in Rome. You will also be given food vouchers (around 240 €/per month) that you can use in most supermarkets and restaurants in Italy. You will also receive 115 € of monthly allowance in the beginning of each month. An Italian language course of at least 20 hours will also be provided by the hosting organisation.

Eligibility

Volunteers should:

• value social inclusion and protection of rights of everyone;
• be willing to work with people from different cultural experiences and backgrounds;
• be not only interested in living in Rome for a year but are motivated to VOLUNTEER for people with disabilities;
• be flexible and responsible;
• preferably already speak some Italian (however this is not a must).

Application

Volunteers interested in the project should send their CV and Motivation Letter and fill in the Application Form AVAILABLE HERE for the position of EVS volunteer at Sezione Laziale della UILDM Onlus to the email address evs@mladiinfo.com before Wednesday 13th February 2013.

Please send us all the documents in English language. Selections will be done together with the hosting organization. Only candidates with full documentation will be taken in consideration for the selection procedure. When you apply for the project, please specify in the subject of the email your name, surname and the name of the EVS project. (Example: Name, Surname – “IntegrACTION”)

For questions and inquiries, please contact Tamara Miletic at evs@mladiinfo.com. More information can be found at the official call for applications AVAILABLE HERE.