Support during the year

During the year you will be supported by Chris as coordinator and the mentors and your co-workers in the working places. They can all help you to feel happy and at home in Holland. However, they can only support you, when you also invest the time & energy in this process. They cannot solve problems FOR you, but they can solve problems WITH you. Learning to take responsibility, giving & receiving feedback and becoming more independent are all part of the voluntary year programme. There will be hard times in the year but WE can get through it TOGETHER. Don’t forget though that the majority of the year is eye opening and a LOT of FUN.

Below you will find a short, general description of the roles of those who are there to support and help you in the year.

Work supervisor or responsible co-workers in the work places

At each placement, there is a person that will guide you in the day-to-day work that you do. This is usually the team leader or one of your colleagues. He/she will introduce you to the other staff, explain what you need to do and provide feedback. With him/her you will have regular meetings to talk about your role and tasks. You should also take time during these meetings to discuss your learning objectives:

• What have you learned so far?

• What would you still like to learn?

These discussions make it easier for you to write down your learning results at the end of the year. You can use these learning results for the Youth pass or add them to your CV. For any

Some more important info:

You will get a contract; called the Activity agreement, in here we describe all the duties and rights of all the participating actors in your EVS: You, your sending organization, your hosting organization and the coordinating organization. All of these actors will sign this before the start of your service and everybody will get a scanned copy on mail.

Drugs and alcohol

You have chosen to do a voluntary year because you want to make a contribution to society by being there for other people. This is a serious commitment, for which you need to give a 100% to. This is why we have a strict alcohol and drug policy. We expect you to enjoy alcohol responsibly in your free time and NEVER during working hours or with clients at ANY time. Excessive drinking will not be tolerated. The use of drugs is NOT allowed during your voluntary year. This includes so-called ‘soft drugs’ (cannabis). If you are using drugs or excessive amounts of alcohol, you can be sent home immediately.

Working hours

You will work a regular working (approx. 30 hours). Each week you are allowed two consecutive days off. When you work in the weekend, you will get time off during the week. When you work on schedule in a team it is not possible to follow this rule. In this case you have the guarantee that you will “on average” work never longer than 30 hours per week during a period of three months. Most of the time this means that you will have three or more days free when you made to many hours before. Depending on your working place you can negotiate about working time and working hours

Living in a community requires you to share some of your free time with those you live with. This is in order to build a team, relationships and to be there for your house mates. For example, watching a movie together or playing a board game. The time you spend with the community is part of your voluntary year experience and should not be seen as working time!

In Lunteren but also in ‘s Kooningsjacht and the houses of Humanitas or in de Glind are all kind of activities that are to be organised like Glindse Foor, St Nicolas day or King’s day. We will ask the volunteers in de Glind to deliver your share. This will give you also the opportunity to give added value mixing up with the inhabitants of the village. For these activities you have 4 hours per week “on average” this is still not much, because in de Glind you have the benefit of having no travel hours to work, in Humanitas and Siza the volunteers have 20 minutes till one hour and 20 minutes of travelling to their working place.

In order to have sufficient opportunities to express yourself, learn to know each other better and to receive support we organise every 14 days intervision and team building meetings/activities. These meetings are obliged. We use these meetings to inform you about the problems you will face in acting with the children, to support you with advice in your work and to feed you with the knowledge you need to do your work properly. For these activities some hours per week are reserved. This will be done by the mentors and can be different for the three different hosting organizations.

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 584