Communities and social work
placements are a very important part of the hosting program offered by AFSAI.
To live and to
work in a community means to be deeply involved in the work carried out and
implies a great deal of willingness to learn something concrete and useful for
your future from the philosophy beyond this life-style. Therefore we expect
volunteers to be very independent, open-minded and ready to learn from the
completely new situation you are going to experience.
When you live in a community
placement, you should be aware that this implies to work seriously for a certain
amount of hours everyday together with the other volunteers and that your free
time has to be decided accordingly to the wishes and requests of the other
members. It must be kept in mind that many communities are self-founded and have
a simple structure; if they apply to host an volunteer is because they need your
active and unbroken contribution to their work and activities. Therefore we ask
volunteers to stay all the year in the same placement.
Jobs are very different: to look
after children, elderly people, people with physical and learning disabilities,
to live and work together with drug addicted etc. For more detailed information
see. The
voluntary program’s chapter (a few pages ahead),
about the voluntary work placements and the booklet “Voluntary Work:
Placements in Italy”. This enclosure describes the placements in Communities
that AFSAI can offer you, in order to help you to better understand the kind of
engagement required and the volunteer’s role inside a project.
All the volunteers who take part in
the voluntary program will receive their placement before their arrival in Italy.
We matured this decision because the european volunteers, cause of the EVS
program requirements, get all the information regarding their placement before
arriving, so we think that all volunteers should know it as well. During the
Language Camp you will receive more detailed information, both from AFSAI and
the responsible people of the communities, that will visit us and also during
the first weeks in your definitive hosting placement.
Since the community members have been
living together for a while, it may be a bit difficult to enter an already
existing group. In such a case it is up to you to break first asking questions
not only about things and habits, but also about more important matters, or
suggesting activities to do together in the free time. Whatever the situation in
the community may be, it is your job to establish a close relationship with the
other persons living in, sharing the daily life and all problems connected to it:
you should never exclude yourself from the rest of the community.
Living
together in a big group is often not easy and changes and improvements are not
so sudden. You will find out that it requires a great deal of maturity, insight
and sensibility to be a good companion and a true friend to a complete stranger.
Be patient, if someone seems to fail sometimes, and above all, help them to
fulfill this task by trying yourself to act in a true friendly and sincerely
manner.
Since 1996 the European Commission
has been running a project, called “European Voluntary Service”. This
project allows only European youngsters, aged between 18 and 25, to do voluntary
work in another member country for a period of 6 or 12 months, giving them
financial support for the whole period. The European volunteers will know their
placement in advance.
The voluntary program
The decision to experience a year of
voluntary work in a foreign country, requires on open-mindedness that allows to
adapt also to work situations that could not be foreseen before your arrival in
Italy. Experience tought us that a positive outcome of the voluntary period
abroad does not depend necessarily
on the type of social work that the volunteer is doing, but on his/her
commitment.
We are
convinced that commitment, flexibility and motivation to help people less
fortunate than we are, create the basis to get as much as possible out the days
you will live in a different context than what you are used to.
The
description that follows will try to show you what does it means to have the
opportunity to do social and voluntary work in Italy.
Volunteers
are placed in Alternative
Living Situations (Communities),
that are projects where you live in
and work with.
Placements
Before to explain to you with more
details what areas are covered by the voluntary program, we would like to stress
the following:
AFSAI
gives you the chance to experience the Italian society, getting a deep insight
into it through social and voluntary work. Therefore it is important that you
take the project work very seriously and that you approach this new experience
in a very adaptable and flexible way.
You
will not become acquainted to the project's life if you are not really willing
to integrate into it. To get a good knowledge of our society it is necessary to
work regularly and continuously in the project, therefore do not expect to
change placement every two months. Projects expect volunteers to act very
frankly, with sense of responsibility and to be tolerant and flexible; the
work you will do within the projects is on a voluntary
base.
Do
not expect to receive money for the work you do. Usually the project itself will
give you the pocket-money to cover your own expenses; it can happen that the
project does not have the economical possibility to pay you this small
contribution. In this case AFSAI will provide you with the pocket-money.
Do
not expect to receive a work
permit.
We invite you to write
us as much as possible about your previous experiences, your
expectations from the project, your personality and your wishes.
It will be better also if you write
us well in advance about the activities you are interested in, describing us the
former experiences about voluntary work you have had.
These information will be for us very
helpful in order to select for you the most suitable project.
How
to handle possible problems
Should misunderstandings or tensions
arise, try to clear them at
once by talking openly about them, be ready to make
fun of your own mistakes, to say that you are sorry, and to forgive a
thoughtless action of others easily.
If serious problems arise you should
not keep them for yourself, hoping that they will automatically disappear. The AFSAI
volunteers in your local chapter and the national AFSAI
office are there to help you out of situations that may seem very dark to you,
only because you see them from a very special angle and you are unable to
evaluate all the sides of the questions. You should never be embarrassed to talk
or to write about things that disappoint you; you should never think that you
must bear any situation, out of the gratitude that you owe to your Italian
family and/or community.
Please be
very frank when you speak with AFSAI
volunteers: their experience may help you in solving the problems you might
face. If we find out that there is something basically wrong in your
relationship with either your family or your community, we will move you into
another placement: this is a very normal policy, that AFSAI
has followed for years. If it is your case, you should not feel that you have
failed your experience; many other volunteers have gone through these changes
before you and have happily finished their voluntary period abroad.
Below you find
a schematic description of AFSAI’s voluntary work. Please do not consider the
names of communities indicated, they are just an example.
