| Summary of the project: | Dear all, Please CONTACT TO :reginacalcagno@gmail.com
Thank you very much for your interest in volunteering in our community. We really need your help. First of all, this is a general explanation/introduction for all of you. However, some of you had particular questions, so I’ll be contacting you one by one… please bear with me!
So, I’m attaching a small document presenting our NGO. The website used to be in English and Spanish till recently. Luckily, we have a volunteer who is redesigning for free our website and so far we are working on the Spanish profile. You should be able to read us in English any time soon.
We are a group of young people from Rosario. We used to be Union representatives at a call center. The first union representatives in a call center in our country, actually. We work closely to the issue of young workers’ rights. When we finished our mandates – we were democratically chosen by our peers – we decided we wanted to continue working on this, so we founded this NGO along with new young people from different backgrounds. So now, even if our main issue is still labor right, we are opening our projects to different areas according to our volunteers’ interests.
Having said that, it’s very important that you understand that we DO NOT own a salary out of our NGO. This NGO is totally volunteered-based from the bottom till the top, we have our own jobs (some are telemarketers, some are translators, web designers, teachers, students, etc.) and we give our free time for this NGO. This is a standard situation for most NGOs in Argentina and I wanted to point out this because we don’t charge you for the project or the time we spend filling in papers, finding the right NGO where you can volunteer, etc., but we ask you for a small contribution (whatever you can appoint in your project) to cover the volunteers’ transportation, supplies such as paper, ink, etc. Please bear in mind that Euro 50 can make a lot of difference for us: since all costs and expenses are from our own pockets.
We are trying to set up a group of multicultural volunteers to give non-formal education courses at local public schools: in labor rights, environmental issues, cross-cultural issues, etc. We are opened to our volunteers’ wishes: we don’t want to impose what to do, we are opened to suggestions and ideas. In the past, since we didn’t have many regular volunteers, we used to send our EVS volunteers to our partners NGOs according to what they wanted to do and to what our partners needed. This is still an opportunity if you have a concrete idea of what you want to do exactly.
Basically, we offer technical services for free to partners NGOs which are already working in the social field. We considered that it was useless to open ONE MORE NGO, especially due to the lack of economical resources we all have. We considered it was more advantageous if we united and we, as young people, could provide them with our technical skills for management, writing projects, helping them detect their problems as an organizations, how to solve them, how to get more resources, etc.
So this is more or less what we are doing now and who we are.
So how can you participate? Basically, we will be the hosting NGO and your local NGO will be the sending organization. Your local NGO must submit the EVS project to Brussels.
When? The next EVS submit is on February 2011 – for projects starting mid-2011. If you want to come on your own, you’ll be more than welcomed to arrive whenever you want, but please bear in mind we don’t have resources, so we will help you find accommodation, with the logistics, etc., but we won’t be able to pay you anything. EVS volunteers, on the other hand, will have their accommodation, or part of it, along with their airplane ticket and some stipend paid by the EU during the year.
Is Spanish compulsory? It’s not compulsory to learn Spanish BEFORE you arrive but it will be YOUR DUTY to learn during your experience since it will be practically impossible to interact with people if you don’t. We also offer classes for those willing to learn faster.
What is Agenda 21’s obligations? Agenda 21 will be in charge of your logistics: we will make all reservations for you to arrive in Rosario save from the airport (and then back at the end of the year). We will be in charge of your welcome and mid-facilitation, to give you start points about Argentina and our culture and then to assess your experience in our country. We will be available for your 24/7 in case of any emergencies (hospitalization, legal issues, etc.). We’ll be working next to you, too. And above all things, we are a group of open-minded young people and the best we can offer you from the personal point of view, is our friendship!
I’ll be soon writing to you personally. Please bear with me, I got lots of emails! If all or most of your questions are answered, don’t hesitate to pass my contact to your local NGO to start writing the EVS project together!
Kind regards,
Regina
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