Go for Short-term European Voluntary Service

hello I am Henk I have been asked to

inform you a bit about short term EVS, maybe to say

at the moment I am Belgian myself but due to

to the mobility programs in the past I moved to Slovenia

and we established a youth centre over there, a youth organisation and focus

really really on working with young people with
fewer opportunities

all different kinds of, all different kind of reasons

we've noticed that sending these young
people

on an international project can really make
a difference it really helps them

develop their own confidence, their own capacities

they really work on their competences

and that's not the only thing
it is also the context

in which they are living, the parents, the school,

the Youth Centre, centres for social work
everybody who is involved

with these young people believe in that and support it

and really make like a really strong
efforts of the young person

to show, hey, you've done something, you see you can do something good which really

has a big big big impact on them

So we started like a couple years ago

between Belgium of course because of the relation and Slovenia

and this has been growing growing and
I must say at the moment we have quite a big network

of organizations who focus more on
your

focus mainly on sending and hosting
young people with fewer opportunities

and this is very important, very
important to have this network because

if if you really want to send or host

receive you need to be sure with your

that you have the right partner, because this is not like a daily event,

this is not just like a holiday
this is really something

it is a hard day working for the organization

and please do not underestimate the effort that the young person has to do because it's

real

a life

changing activity which means that for a lot
of young people

they are getting confronted with their own limitations

these young people when you send them
first of all

you need to know them, you have to be sure that you know that they're willing to go

if they're not motivated it's very hard

You need to prepare them, as I said it's
not a holiday

it's not a school trip it is really something
which

has a very very influence on different

images of their own life on

also as I said before on
their direct context and so on

so prepare them very well on

then during the event itself do not
think they gonna be

for a long time away and they are going to change, no!

it's just a small seed which has to grow
because

every EVS is just a method it's never

never an aim on itself, there has to be something
following

as a long-term pathway

and yeah, why should you do it?

If you want to host it's different do not expect to have
like

an extra

extra pair of hands in your organization
because the service is less important

than the learning, the development on

what should you do it? Because it's a
choice it's a mission

and you help people and in many cases

it's also the opportunity to be able to
send

your young people to this organization

yeah, we have very good results

young people are very happy lot of them
went back to school for example

A lot of the found a job afterwards or just

finally had a positive experience
which they hadn't seen in a long time

I can also give an example, we had two young
people who are

quite disabled group and they went only for 2 weeks to a festival in Slovakia

which was an enormous

impact what happened to them and
when they came back

they were able to move out

from the living group, the living unit and they went to like

a more a home replacing situation a

more independent way of living and so on

Small steps are important small goals
are important

but it is important that you're
realistic what you're really realistic

that you do not say

hey, we are going to change the world. No,
step-by-step

and don't forget to involve the young persons

ask them what they want to, do look
together with them look together what is

the goal they want to achieve

Yeah, so why should you do it

well you have to be a bit of a masochist
because it is hard working

but at the end you have such a reward, such a good
feeling

and then you see the results so I can

definitely definitely recommend it and
the good thing is that

compared with the regular EVS is that there are
also a lot of possibilities financially

so you can apply for exceptional costs

you can apply for special costs related
to special needs,

and this can be very diverse for example
you can

apply for extra funding to give them a
better

deeper longer preparation, you could ask
for

reinforcement mentorship so that they
are always have a monitoring

on the young person is always somebody
available to give them a hand, to give

them the push when needed.

it is
important that

these young people do have a mentor somebody
who is really

stand next to them, not above or under them.

A mentor is more than just a friend a mentor is
also a big shoulder,

somebody to be to rely on

a somebody who helps in daily life

The mentor that doesn't have to be
available 24 hours a day

but should be aware that he has to be a bit more more flexible

For some people being a
mentor is as a personal choice a

and some organization it's a job
depends how you look at

I can really only say

be aware that

when you decide to do with you cannot do
it alone to be in a team

everybody from the organization has to be behind it

everybody has to supported it and I think

that this will be

something which you have to prepare for
the well in advance

everything starts the with preparation and

being aware that's not a regular EVS

it Is really really a different way

but with a very good impact

a couple of a good things with short
term EVS is that a when you apply

you can apply longer in advance and you can
be more flexible

because if you really say oh we have the
volunteers then you have to apply, then

you have to wait for approval, then you have
to wait

for the preparation, then there is the
starting date

it can take six months and believe me
these young people with fewer opportunities

they are not always motivated that long
so when they're motivated

you to catch them and have to be able to
send them, I can't say as soon as possible but

within a normal framework you have to put them on
the plane

this means that your partner
organization has to be ready to be flexible

also means that you need to be aware
that the preparation of these young people

should be really scheduled and structured
individual.

what do we do especially in preparation?

We inform the context, we work with the
context we go together to the parents

because they need to support it. We
try to do

several things together with the young
person for example he doesn't have an identity card

or a passport we go together. What else
do we do

give of course a training but everything is on an
individual base

as much as possible we work on
self-confidence, sometimes we even have to

go to back together so that the young
person

definitely has everything with him what
he needs otherwise they end up with two

two pairs of underwear for
a whole week for example

or other problems or they have their
summer clothes going to

cold country so it is,

they really need to be held by hand but
at the same time

you need to give them the possibility to
discover themselves. It is empowering all the time

and important

very important but often is forgotten what
is the same as regular EVS

needs to be follow-up you need to validate

what's going on with them so and mostly
when you can do it is with this together again

with this context you have been working in, with the
parents,

the organizations and so on because alone to
do a follow-up

alone with these young people needs to
be enforced everyday again

and be very clear in your goal

that's where you want to go to. Otherwise
what I would say

just go for it just do it don't be
scared of it really it's just

very very it's more easy than you would
think. Start with the network start with

finding organizations who want to work
with you

be sure you can trust them and if it's a
failure

well you should learn out of it and

and do it again and make clear to the young
person

that the failure, everybody is allowed to have a failure but you should stand up

and go again. Once you get the tricks

you go and you'll see

it's really worth doing it