What challenge inspired this recipe?
Our organisation is an exchange organisation. It means we can celebrate all along the years new arrivals and depatures from incoming, but also outgoing volunteers. In this vivid context, it is very important for us to establish personal contacts with all the volunteers ; but also to enhance peer support among them. At this regard, the idea of organising Get Together gathering came to mind very quickly. This activity respects the following features :
The participants are :
– Outgoing volunteers in need of a pre departure training ;
– Incoming volunteers who have just arrived in Belgium ;
– Incoming volunteers who are at the end of their project ;
– One or two volunteers who came back from their project and are willing to share their experience as well as their help to facilitate the weekend.
Duration : the activity lasts three days in total but all the volunteers don’t arrive at the same time.
Objectives :
COMMON :
– Prevent risks during the project (talking about commitment, introduction to interculturality, conflict management) ;
– Collective life and how to deal with it (common resident chart, sustainability)
– Create a bond with CBB ;
– Insure the volunteers are in touch with each other ;
– Favor networking and common initiatives ;
– Provide the space for the young people to learn from each other
Foreign volunteers starting their project :
– Check that the volunteers are feeling okay in their project and are adapting ;
– Help them to identify people/places/activities according to their needs ;
– Check in depth any questions related to administrative steps (Henner, national healthcare system, municipality registration, Youthpass, bank account, OLS, GOT…) ;
– Raise awareness about interculturality and its challenges
Foreign volunteers at the end of their project :
– Reflect on the learnings they acquired during the experience and work on the Youthpass ;
– Prepare their way back home (personal projects, administrative steps, opportunities for recognition of the experience…)
Belgian volunteers getting ready to join their project abroad :
– Support the volunteers who don’t have a project yet in finding one ;
– Understand the administrative steps to be taken before departure ;
– Get inspired by the other volunteers in terms of personal projects and occupations during their free time
Ingredients :
Accommodation for the number of people should you choose to make it residential
A lot of materials, depending on the activities you decide to have.
Step by step guide
The event starts on day 1 morning, only with the volunteers at the end of their project. The objective is to spend one last leisure time moment together and use this informal opportunity to share about their projects and their future plans.
The two other groups join from day 1 evening.
The volunteers at the end of their project are invited to stay until day 2 afternoon, which leave us the day to organise the workshops in which they can share their experience, give their advices to the newcomers and those about to leave.
They are free to stay for the entire duration if they want, and in this case they can support the facilitation team or simply participate to the activities.
As we don’t have much time, we decided that we would also collect the expectations and needs of the volunteers beforehand, so we can each time adapt the programme according to what they need.
Important to highlight!What we have been trying out during our last event is to also invite the volunteers being at the middle of their project. We therefore proposed a workshop that would help them to reflect on leads for personal projects, as well as their intrisic motivators to keep the motivation during the entire project. The choice was given to them to participate or not, and they all came. It was a very interesting opportunity to add an extra step on which we can build further : either by focusing the reflection on a personnal project to be implemented during ; either by building on this to talk and think about their plans once the projet is over. Additionally, these events are now mentioned in the AA of each volunteers and recognised by the hosting organisations as working time, which also motivates the volunteers to attend, especially when it is taking place during a weekend. |
Before you start cooking, keep in mind…
To have enough facilitators to deal with three different groups which don’t have matching objectives
To be able to adapt the activities according to the number of people arriving at each deadline.
To be complementary, and not repetitive with the seminars organised by the National Agency. In our case, we have fluent communication with the NA which allows us to be aware about the topics tackled and the methods used so as to avoid redundancy.
Contact the CLIC project manager in order to get the full workshop material: dg@compagnonsbatisseurs.be
