Temat: Wolontariat w Romunii

Project environment contact gajafundacja@gmail.com
As a host organisation, Association A.E.R. will be responsible for providing an activity plan as well as safe working and living conditions to each volunteer throughout the project activities. We will provide personal supervision (mentor), language support for Romanian, and work-related support and/or training to enable full integration into the project. We will also provide accommodation and food (or food money), accordingly with each project features.
We will involve volunteers in general art and culture and cooperation development activities, two areas of major interest in our programs. We focus on personal development of the volunteer while involved in our programs, looking to establish an intercultural understanding and exchange of experience between the volunteers and the people he/she will work with, as well as to establish a European dimension of our projects, either through common European values to be envisaged during projects implementation and/or through setting up European structures of support for our projects' end beneficiaries and the volunteers. At the end of the volunteer placement in our organisation, we want he/she will go back in his country of origin with an enhanced understanding of Romanian culture and civilisation, and its role toward a common Europe and a better world.
The volunteers will be placed in locall communities, or private and/or public institutions, nationwide Romania, working with various groups from children with disabilities, ill children, abandoned children, orphans and vulnerable children, institutionalised children, toward adults in need of mentality changing, or facing illness, unemployment, domestic violence, drug abuse, poverty, offensive behaviour, parenting issues, immigration, and other, from youth in need of personal development and students facing educational obstacles, discrimination, language barriers or unemployment, to elder in need of personal and/or domestic care, ill elders, other. Should the case that host placement will be placed in a live-in community, the volunteer will be, prior to signing agreement, correctly and fully informed upon the rules and conditions that will apply.
The volunteer has assured a training session on -arrival, pre-departure training, mid-term evaluation and final evaluation. These trainings and evaluation meetings assure the succes of each volunteer volunteer integration into the projects.
We intend to offer each volunteer a non-formal learning and intercultural environment, in which, using its own skills, abilities and personal hobbies, he/she can bring out the best of him/her, aquire new skills and competencies, and share with the community he/she encounters common and new values of respect, tolerance, diversity acceptance, equity, equality, responsbility and self-confidence. We intend to offer the volunteer the chance to discover Romania and Romanians' customs and values, and share with them a sense of international understanding of real and local problems.
The EVS volunteers in our host organisation will be to develop own-initiated or organisational initiated projects in response to local community and people's social, economical, geographical, cultural, environmental problems, using his/her hobbies and personal interests. These projects will aim to offer volunteer opportunity to express his/her personal approach as a response to these problems, in order to give the affected local Romanian communities and people his/her support and understanding, and to receive from them their acceptance and joy to share together values, opinions and common practical actions.
The activities in A.E.R. are concentrated around Art and Culture and Cooperation Development, and we expect projects to be initiated by the volunteer and cover various issues, such as, for example:
- music
- visual art
- theater
- photo
- complex cultural projects
- literature/storytelling
- poetry
- multumedia
as well as:
- workshops
- residential trainings
- one-day fundraising events
- summer schools
- camps
- festivals
- online learning
- dissemination of various forms of active citizenship and volunteering, global interdependence, models of civil commitment, a culture of peace, mutual understanding between different peoples and cultures, models of responsible consumption of resources of the Earth
- promoting gender and women issues
- democracy and good governance projects (direct project, lobby, advocacy, campaigns, etc).
Each volunteer will have gained the necessary experience to enable them to bring their active commitment in the Romanian civil society. To this end they will carry out activities of support and assistance of people and communities, under the professional and personal orientation form the project coordinator.
The volunteers will get practica experience in working with communities and people facing various obstacles, learning how to deal sensitively with these people, they will get experience of working in non-formal settings, will learn how to design and deliver activities, will develop his/her own ability to engage in activities with people from another culture. The will develop their teamwork skills, and will gain self-confidence by taking initiative and setting up a personal project. They will aquire in-depth knowledge of Romanian culture and civilisation, including basic Romanian language learning.
We don`t have any special demands that the volunteers has to fullfil. The absolutely most important criteria is the motivation to work with people and communities that face social, economical, cultural, geographical or other types of obstacles. We try to be flexible towards the activities and find tasks that the volunteers enjoy to work with, giving them opportunity to bring their own approach, inovation and personal approach in communicating and expressing their help and support. Motivation, communication, an open mind and ability to work with different people are the most important key defining features of the sought volunteer profile and will be counted as standard criteria in recruitment process.
The recruitment process will envisage establishing solid partnership with accredited NGO working in Art and Culture and Cooperation Development field, worlwide. In partnership with these organisation, we will try to recruit volunteers according with the sough profile and email and phone/videoskype communications will ensure a preliminary interview between the volunteer and the project coordinator. Based upon their application and the interview, we will make our decision. Those who are not selected will get an written explanation why they were not selected, if they express their need in this respect.
The A.E.R. organisation works with highly skilled local volunteers and collaborators that are always in place to offer guidance and support to volunteers with fewer opportunities. In majority of cases, these volunteers will be placed in communities and institutions that currently employs a very highly qualified staff with a sound pedagogical and psychological knowledge and a lot of experience in working with maladjusted or disadvantaged people, thus being able to and well prepared to accept volunteers from dysfunctional groups.
Because of the specificity of these projects, acceptance of a volunteer with limited capabilities will be discussed individually with the sending organization.
Safety at work is a high priority for A.E.R. organisation.
The volunteer will be advised about risk prevention and management on the on-arrival training. The host-organisation keep names and numbers of the nearest relatives so we can contact them in case of emergency. We will make sure volunteer has a valid medical insurance on arrival.
Conditions in which volunteers will be hosted don't present any risks, they will be in permanent contact with a coordinator and a mentor who will be at their disposal for any need that they encounter. In order to prevent illness, volunteers will be subject to a medical examination when needed, will be vaccinated if necessary, and in case of illness, will be provided with all necessary protection, based on prior medical insurance of each volunteer.
Also to avoid risks of conflict between volunteers hosted in the same time, working on same activity or living in the same flat, will keep weekly discussions addresing feedback and complaints from volunteers and staff members, to prevently address potential conflicts. We will avoid conflicts between them and the community through frequent meetings between members of the community and volunteers.
Volunteers may call whenever they need, the mentor, in order to address complaints, or other personal needs, and they will hold meetings with the community they work in, when needed and possible.
Motivation and EVS experience
Association A.E.R. is active in volunteer based projects development since its inception. We work and train volunteers to become leaders of own projects that have a direct impact upon local communities where they are from. Organisational staff is working to develop program on volunteer based and is engaged in national also international projects. We envisage voluntary experience as a life-changing experience for both volunteer and its tutor.
We would like to participate in EVS as a sending organisation, giving young Romanian people the chance to discover how their Romanian citizenship, their personal and social values, and their national history counts in building a representative and united Europe and a world in which everyone counts and can be counted.
We would also like to participate in EVS as a host organisation, bringing in Romania young volunteers from abroad that, through direct interaction with young people in country, will promote diversity acceptance, tolerance and common values worldwide. European volunteers are targeted to develop in Romania projects that could be replicated locally, nationally and/or at European level and could contribute toward a better European understanding and acceptance in country.
We would like to be considered also a coordinating organization, as our organisation works directly with other Community Based organisation or Non-Profits in Romania and abroad, and would be thereafter able to coordinate volunteer based projects by assisting them in this respect.
Description of the organisation
A.E.R. Association has been founded in 2006, based on founding members' expertise of over 10 years supporting civic development in Romania. We aim to support local socio-economic development and social entrepreneurship in Romania and abroad, actively contributing to international development.
Main areas of interventions are:
- technical assistance and consultancy in support of fundraising capacity building for NGOs and CBOs in Romania;
- press article writing in support of developing SMEs capacity to access European funds for socio-economical development of Romania;
- information dissemination regarding fundraising sources of interest to potential social entrepreneurs in Romania and abroad;
- developing and managing innovative fundraising events and programs in support of fundraising capacity building for NGOs and CBOs in Romania;
- developing and managing non-formal education programs in support of general capacity building for NGOs and CBOs in Romania and at International level;
- organising informative seminaries and workshops focused on environment protection, cultural development, social change through art, personal development, development of local social services and other issues of interest
- developing and managing direct artistic/art-based projects aimed to respond to current, local or international, social problems.
Largest grant administered: over 8000 EUR, through PHARE 2006 funding.
No of staff members (current): 0
No of volunteers (since inception): 7.
No of paid collaborators (since inception): 5.