If you want to know more about our volunteers, have a look at the postcards below! ⇓
Maria Soeiro
JOIN US: January 2016 – January 2017
The context of the project “Join Us” is the area of Pordenone, in which there are different youth centers which collaborate in order to create innovative visions for youth politics. The progetto giovani “Zanca”, headquarter of the project, plays an important role in promoting and supporting, in the traditional and innovative field, and represents a great growth opportunity for young people in this area.
The volounteer is involved in a project which includes transversal activities between different CAG (youth centers) which will be carried out under the guidance of Itaca’s Youth Politics responsible. After the first round of observation, the volounteer will be involved in different activities:
- Opening of new communication channels/comparison between services (headquarter: Sacile,but it would change eventually): planning of common events between the different headquarters,checking the various projects by creating multimedia tools, creating registers and communication tools between different realities.
- Collaboration with schools and other educational entities of t6he various territories (headquarter: Sacile,but it would change eventually): preparation of informative meetings with high school students about formative and mobility opportunities around Europe.
- Support to the activity of the local Eurodesk point: news update, collection of information on the Intranet database, promotion of initiatives carried out by the network and participation to the network’s biannual formation meetings.
Eniko Balla
PAINT MY LIFE: Period: April 2015 – April 2016
The accredited community for this project is a hosting community for people with disabilities. In this community the attendances are planned through the individualized planning, which represents the tool of a strong helping relationship and a constructive accompaniment of the disabled person. All the offered activities are tools of the user’s participation, integration and leadership, as an integrant part of each walk of life.
One of the main goals is to stimulate and support the social and cultural integration in the local community through well studied initiatives.
The volunteer, in the light of his learning expectations and of the skills to be developed, can be involved in some of the following initiatives:
- A project called “Creative Workshop” with the goal to enable artistic workshops for users to produce handcrafts (magnets, clips, tweezers, paperweights and decorative panels with subjects drawn by the users). The volunteer can cooperate to the design of new artistic products and to the preparation of the raw material (wood, mosaic tiles, colors etc.)
- A project called “Ri-Uscire”, which is an activity development of the guests’ free time, implementing all the fun activities and the informal relationships between the hosts and the local community citizens;
- An activity of artistic management of the project called “Life Diary”, a project that involves the collection of moments, places, stories and hobbies of those guests who feel that they are able and ready to express the will to do so. The story will then be accompanied by paintings, pictures, thoughts and writings of the guest.
The first finality intends to promote an open relationship by the hosts, through the development of the individual expressiveness; the workshop will be a useful tool to develop some objectives in every host (increase concentration abilities, discrimination abilities, first approach to work experience…) and all the handcrafts will be shared with the local community thanks to the business ventures interested in displaying them in their shops.
Juana Rosalina Chouza
GET STARTED ON: Period: April 2015 – April 2016
This project has been submitted in October 2014. The path length of one year starting from April 2015 and it involves a young Spanish girl who is doing her volunteering activities in a mental health hosting community in Pordenone.
The main goal of this area is to grant the possibility for individuals to reach a state of well-being and to be able to share the journey taken to reach that state together with the people who are significant in their lives.
With GET STARTED ON we want to create an opportunity to encounter stories, biographies and reflections that are capable of overturning beliefs and stereotypes on mental illness, to help contaminate borders and to dismantle taboos and differences. The goal is to build activities engaged within the territory, aimed to encourage civil leadership, citizen solidarity and to restore social contact.
Activities will be held in wellbeing shared spaces through a variety of forms of expression such as painting, reading and writing, photography etc.; the activities and the realized products will be shared with the local community, allowing further opportunity for contact and dialogue.
The role of the volunteer, added to a team of highly qualified staff, will be to participate in an educational experience with the function to support and to engage. Voluntary activities aim to improve tolerance among young people towards mental health illness and to contribute to reduce the preconception towards psychiatric users.
The goals of this project are:
- Raise awareness of the local environment to the knowledge of mental distress
- Promote the transmissibility of the EVS experience within the local community;
- Transmit fundamental concepts like tolerance, culture, peace and cooperation between people, the fight against racism and other kinds of discrimination;
- Encourage volunteering activities among young people;
- Promote volunteering as a means of spreading the value of solidarity and an active and responsible citizenship
- Promote acquired skills recognition through volunteering activities participation, promote youth social commitment recognition and promote the value of volunteering as a means of transition from training to employment.
Juan Pedro Barbadillo
INTEGR-ACTION [EQUAL VALOR SOCIETY]: April 2013 – April 2014
With this project we aimed at enhancing welcoming paths for European volunteers, who were placed in a mental health community in Pordenone. Volunteers joined our staff in organizing the following activities:
- Organization of recreational activities (for example creative workshops, reading of books and newspapers, musical activities);
- educational interventions on personal autonomy (for example: use of computers and internet where possible);
- educational interventions on social autonomy skills;
- external laboratories;
One of the goals was to stimulate and support the social and cultural integration of volunteers in the territory and in the local community. Volunteers worked on the recognition of the personal characteristics of the community guests, orienting them towards specific activities through a friendly and participative relationship.
We helped volunteers in organizing their learning path, orienting them on how to set personal priorities, manage working time and handle information.
