Itália

3614

Data de início: 01-06-2014

Data de fim: 01-06-2015

Vagas: 1

Duração: 12 mes(es)

Data limite de candidatura: 30-08-2013

Financiamento: Candidatura

Subsídio mensal (Dinheiro de bolso): 115 €

Candidatura: Para te poderes candidatar tens de fazer o teu login. Se ainda não estás registado faz o teu registo primeiro.

Resumo: The project and the volunteers’ activities will take place in the city, where the Social Cooperative is placed since the beginning of its activity.

This is a city of about 115.550 inhabitants. It is strategically placed in the heart of Veneto Region: being practically in the centre of the territory, it is easily and efficiently connected with the other Veneto provinces, especially with Verona, Venezia, Padova and Treviso.

The city is considered the “actual capital” of the Venetian productive system, based on small/medium family run businesses; a sort of backbone for such a system, which is capable of exporting alone as much as some whole European countries. The economy of the city is characterised for having some important productive clusters specialised in gold jewellery, ceramics, tanning and mechanics. Even if the unemployment rate has risen in the past years, it is still very low, nearly physiological.
The morphological and geographical variety of the city and its surroundings is composed by mountains, hills, rivers, some lakes and plains, which create a particularly fascinating landscape. The city offers also a wide range of cultural, artistic and historical attractions for tourists. It has been, and still is, the generator of arts and culture: many important names such as Andrea Palladio, Vincenza Scamozzi, Carlo Scarpa have tied their creations to this town.

For these reasons the city is definitely worth a visit. Landscapes and architecture of the city are considered as a sort of “unicum”, so that the city, as well as Palladio villas, have been deserved to be inserted in Unesco World Heritage List (since 1994).

That wide variety of attraction creates seven kinds of tourism typologies:
cultural tourism; wine and gastronomic tourism; conference tourism; mountain tourism; thermal tourism; active tourism; religious tourism.

Since 1990 the city hosts the units of some faculties of Padua University (Engineering, Veterinary Medicine) and of Verona University (International Economy). This fact has made the city centre more vital and alive, since lots of students coming from all the Northern regions of Italy are living in the city for the course of their studies. The University is getting bigger and is widening its offices, making the city a cultural pole of undoubtedly value.

Perfil: Profile of candidates: the first priority has been that the volunteers were motivated and interested in meeting and working with all the staff and the beneficiaries of the service.
In general, volunteers should be pro-active, enthusiastic, creative, keen to take initiative, adaptable, open-minded, positive and reliable. It is essential that the candidates show enough enthusiasm, so to guarantee a continuous learning approach, being available to constantly develop new capabilities and skills. They should shown these attitudes compiling a cover letter and explaining their expectations during interviews, which will be arranged using IT means like Skype video conference. Such interviews are planned only if the first selection phase has been successful. This phase foresees an exchange with the sending organisation in order to deepen its relation with the volunteers and to check once more their motivation, from a professional point of view.

age: 18 until 30 years old

Tarefas: Volunteers will be involved in three main activities, which will be combined in the weekly timetable according to their preferences and personal skills.

- Bar service. The Cooperative manages a bar in order to improve its link with the local community. It is open during the day to the public and it is specially thought to be a place where youth (but also adults) can spend their time, cyclically offering themed-evening and cultural events, to be eventually organised also in cooperation with other local voluntary associations. The bar activity is run both by permanent staff members and by employees temporary inserted with their educational programmes. It is seen as a great opportunity for them to take a deeper contact with the “everyday-life rules and environment”.
Volunteers will give their contribution during the service hours having the opportunity to meet local informal youth groups. They will be given the freedom to propose initiatives to make the bar more original (i.e. organising concerts, photography/art exhibitions, reading, video screening, cultural events, workshops, etc.); the presence of European volunteers is considered really precious since they will take new and fresh air into the bar. At the same time, they could have the gratification to see applied and realized their eventual proposals and ideas.

Such activity is run during the day (the bar is open from 8.30 until 19.30, and even late in case a special event is planned).
Since 2012 the staff members of the bar are also in charge of preparing the daily lunches for all the colleagues. Therefore, volunteers will also help in doing this activity, which can be a great chance to learn cooking for a wide number of people, as well as to understand all the rules to be followed by a restaurant business.

- Activities linked to the reconditioning of goods. The Cooperative, as already explained, reclaim used goods; in order to be reinserted in the market, a part of them needs a “handcraft intervention”, able to give them new life (furniture and wood objects restoration, textile laboratory, etc.). This activity is run also in cooperation with disadvantaged people, providing them a job that could become a kind of educational programme. Working in these laboratories represents for these people a big opportunity to find new potential ways, because it lets them acquire manual competences they could valorise even after the programme end.

Volunteers will have the possibility to give their support to this activity, from one side learning manufacturing technics, from the other side developing a special sensitiveness to accompany disadvantaged people in their work.
Furthermore, there will be the satisfaction to see their own works on sale at the Cooperative shop “Fatto e Rifatto” (which means “Made and Re-made”)!

This activity is usually run with the following hours: 8.00-12.00; 13.00-17.00.

- Sensitisation, educational and training sessions with schools. The Cooperative is frequently charged to run activities within primary and secondary schools (target groups: children and youth from 6 to 18 years old) in order to sensitise new generations to issues such environment, recycle, sustainable development, volunteering, de-growth, etc. The Cooperative operators deal with such themes with different approaches, coherently with the target group they are addressing every single time. Such a work foresees a “backstage” part, consisting in preparing activities and methodologies (games, vision of short movies or cartoons, power point presentations, reading of a particular excerpt from a book or from a magazine, etc.) and an “on field” one, which consisting in running the proper training sessions, visiting the classes within their schools and carrying on the planned activities.

EVS volunteers will support the Cooperative operators in both the preparatory phase (thinking about the way to present a particular issue, planning the laboratories /workshops /activities, preparing the materials, contact the schools, etc.) and in the running one (support in training sessions, animate the classes, spend time with children and youth, deal with teachers, etc.). Every new idea, suggestion, proposal coming from them will be welcome; in such a work field the innovation and the originality can make the difference in the action effectiveness; so volunteers could bring fresh contribution and a positive energy! Their initiative will be surely encouraged.

Horário: Such activity is usually run during the morning (8.30-12.30), and depends on the local projects going on. Volunteers are always informed about its variability.

In addition to these two main areas, the Cooperative is often involved in the organisation of events linked to the issues promoted (environment, recycle, sustainable development, critical consumption, de-growth, etc.). When such events are going to take place, volunteers will be asked to support the organisational phase (preparing materials, brochure, contact partner, etc.) and even to attend the event itself. In these cases, that are not possible to be anticipated yet, it will be agreed with the volunteers the commitment they would like to take, deducting the hours they will spend for this issue from the standard week timetable.

Volunteers will be able to gain a valuable experience, both from a human and from a professional point of view; the skills acquired will be transferrable also in their own country and in different working settings. On the other hand, hosting international volunteers will make the Cooperative able to better organise its activities, having the chance to propose new ideas and methodologies coming from different cultures.

Thus, the added value coming form the EVS exchange experience will be actual for both the parties involved.
Volunteers will be encouraged to propose their personal ideas/projects/initiatives related to the project themes, according to a bottom-up approach.

The areas in which they will be involved can be considered as flexible boxes that can be differently fill in according to the volunteers’ proposals and initiative. Since such activities are only partially structured, they could be supported by volunteers both just following the “usual schemes”, but also giving an actual contribution in innovating and refreshing them. Thus, the different possible levels of involvement can be very well adapted to the single volunteer attitudes and expectations.

Taking into account volunteers’ skills and projects' needs, priority tasks and detailed working schedule (including holidays, breaks, etc.) will be worked out together with the head of project and staff.

Anyway, as general rule, the service schedule is agreed is organised as follows: 6/7 hours per day (30 hours of service per week, excluding mentoring meetings), 5 days per week, two consecutive days off per week and 2 days holiday per month for the duration of the project.

Documentação: CV + Carta de Motivação em Inglês