Cluj-Napoca Volunteer Center is searching for a French volunteer to join the team of other 5 volunteers from Germany, Spain, Portugal and Poland in order to take part in a one year project in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, starting in September 2017. In the first part, the project will involve hospital animation activities and intercultural clubs developed in schools.
In the second part of the service all the volunteers will be involved in organizing 1 public event promoting learning through board games, 2 public events promoting volunteering within the National Volunteer Week, and will have the opportunity to develop and implement other personal initiatives.
The project has as main objective the personal development of the volunteers, including growth in areas such as communication skills, deeper understanding of the concept of mutual acceptance and tolerance, time management skills, planning and organizing events, team-work related skills, creativity, innovation etc.
At community level, the project aims at enhancing the healing process of the children hospitalized in the local Children’s Hospital by creating an environment that supports that. Also, the project sets to contribute to the development of mutual understanding and tolerance among children living in the multicultural communities in the area of Cluj-Napoca, but also to promote volunteering and board games as a way for community development.
Tasks
What will the volunteers do?
As mentioned already, the project includes several activities:
1. Developing a clinic animation programme in the local Children’s Hospital
This activity involves working in the hospital mostly in the afternoon (from 13-17), in order to prevent their activities from interfering with the medical procedures that usually take place in the first part of the day.
The volunteers are supposed to work in different parts of the pediatric hospital, according to a previously defined schedule. At the beginning of the project the volunteers are going to be trained in a few introductory notions about clinic animation by the staff of our organization, but also by other persons that have been working already in this field.
The specific daily activities in the hospital require the active input of each person from the team of 6, since the EVS volunteers will be the main actors in choosing the activities, planning them, preparing all the materials and delivering them to the children. The volunteers will not substitute the medical staff or be involved in activities that are similar to the medical attention given by doctors or nurses, but will bring something new to what a hospital usually offers in Romania. So, volunteers prepare a series of educational and artistic activities such as: storytelling, English lessons (using the methods specific to the non-formal education), and planning different games according to the level of mobility and intellectual development of the little patients.
2. Intercultural clubs in schools in the Cluj-Napoca metropolitan area
Other opportunities for the volunteers to get active include their involvement in different schools in the city of Cluj-Napoca and nearby, facilitating intercultural clubs in order to foster the growth in tolerance and understanding among the children aged 7 to 12 (mostly primary school) who live in multicultural communities consisting of Romanians, Hungarians, and Rroma. The clubs also aim to increase their knowledge related to and curiosity towards the specificity of other communities, different from their own. The school activities involve the same groups of children through the school-year. Same as in case of the clinic animation, the type, content, materials etc. of the activities are outlined and prepared by the volunteers, under the guidance of the volunteer coordinator. These activities are usually structured in 3-4 interactive lessons having the same topic (e.g. cultural diversity, gender, disability, stereotypes, etc.) because this step by step approach proved to be more efficient in gradually deepening the children’s understanding on a topic. The learning process of the children is mostly facilitated by the volunteers, but a Romanian-speaking person (teacher and/ or local volunteer) will assist the clubs, especially in the first part of the project, until the EVS volunteers improve their Romanian communication skills and get to know the group of children they are working with.
3. National Volunteer week
Starting with 2002, every spring is marked in Cluj by the National Volunteer Week (SNV) organized by Cluj-Napoca Volunteer Centre. The event aims at promoting civic and social responsibility through concrete volunteering actions, volunteer fairs, public events in order to support the value of volunteering in our community. The EVS volunteers will have the chance to propose, plan and organize 2 public events to include in the 2018 edition of the National Volunteer Week.
Other details:
The volunteers work 2 days a week in the Children’s hospital and 2 days in the schools, in groups of 2 or 3 persons. Every week, one day is reserved for evaluation and general planning meeting in our office with the volunteer coordinator and the other EVS volunteers, as well as for preparing the upcoming week and especially the needed materials.
In the second part of the service, volunteers will be involved also in facilitating social events using board games for various target groups as the main tool, planning the National Volunteer Week, delivering presentations about EVS for young people, and developing personal initiatives that meet both the interests of the volunteer and the needs of the local community.
The total number of working hours for the volunteer every day is of 6 hours, including the Romanian language courses and other type of activities (administrative meetings, trainings and evaluations, etc.).
Procedure