What challenge inspired this recipe?
While few volunteers ESTYES coordinates live individually, most of those who stay in the capital Tallinn stay in the apartments ESTYES owns or rents having a collective accommodation (4-7 people in one flat). Since we are in charge of these premises we have established rules of accommodation in our apartments, which volunteers have to read and agree on by signing it. Here we would like to introduce these rules.
Ingredients :
Accommodation rules. See sample here https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gbXWc1rqgpvZqb5jRXGx4aOT2N5WrAm8/view?usp=sharing
Step by step guide
There rules are based on the years of our practice when we had to deal with all kind of problems, mainly caused by different understanding or misunderstanding, variety of habits and cultural backgrounds. Here is the link to a sample: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gbXWc1rqgpvZqb5jRXGx4aOT2N5WrAm8/view?usp=sharing
These rules are pretty much self-explanatory. However there are some elements we wish to draw your attention to.
Usually apartments are refreshed and cleaned before the volunteers’ arrival. We ask volunteers to keep apartments tidy by establishing a calendar of cleaning duty involving all inhabitants.
In the ideal world apartment should be returned in the same shape as it was given but it does not happen often in reality. To cover possible damage we ask volunteers to pay a deposit of 80 euro, which we may engage to cover costs of damage made by a volunteer or losses (like loss of keys) to pay for the replacement. To deal with greater damage we have a good insurance for each of our flats.
Volunteers are asked to be moderate in electricity and water consumption saving it. If monthly consumption goes beyond agreed limits, ESTYES has a right to take money from monthly allowance to cover the extra costs. We encourage volunteers to practice recycling getting necessary things to the apartments from second hand shops. And of course we very much follow this practice ourselves. Sorting garbage is another important element we explain and ask for.
Smoking is not allowed inside flats. It is not healthy for a smoker neither for co-inhabitants
Pets are not allowed in the shared apartments. If volunteer wants to come with pet, a separate accommodation will be needed and volunteer may have to pay additionally for it
Parties are not really welcome in the apartments, at least wild ones. In any case we have rest hours from 22:00 to 7:00 in Estonia, and volunteers have to follow it to avoid disturbing neighbors. We had some cases in the past when neighbors had to call a police to stop party in the flat. Quite unpleasant situation and a costly one as volunteers had to pay fine.
Generally, we do not allow guests for overnight stay in the apartments. Being more open for it in the past we finally had to deal with complains and various problems. It is hard to invent system fair to everyone, so the easier ways is to avoid it completely.
Important to highlight!Although our accommodation rules are simple, logic and self-explanatory, they are really needed to be set and followed. This is what our long experience, sometimes quite painful one taught. The more you explain and agree the less problems and conflicts you will have later. Still better to be ready to have some. Regular visits to the accommodation and meetings with volunteers are of a great help and are really advisable. A nice method to get volunteers involved is running their accommodation is to ask them to make a “shopping list” for the things needed in the flat soon after their arrival. This will not only help then to get necessary stuff which was missing but also create a sense of involvement of running together their temporary accommodation. Finally: do make insurance for collective flat to be able to cover damage done to it or to neighbors by careless actions of your volunteers. |
Before you start cooking, keep in mind…
It is not easy to convince volunteers to follow these rules, to be honest. And to make sure it has been followed, we need to do some monitoring visiting our flats once in a while, preferably at least once a month. But it is not always easy to find a time (and motivation) for it. A dramatic moment comes when volunteers are gone and you discover a lot of things which have to be repaired or renewed. Often when something is broken there is nobody responsible for it as it happens on its own – perhaps…
And the worst thing is to deal with complains of neighbors, which often are justified.
