This part has to be filled in only if the applicant requests to be accredited as host organisation. The points below are intended to serve as a guide for the description of activities foreseen by the host organisations.
A. Project environment: profile of the organisation and local community
Casa Betania has been operating for 14 years in aid of mothers and children in necessity conditions. In the Home all our hosts live together like a big family. The European volunteers will also actively enter in our "family". They will be involved in the association's activities, according to their interests and abilities, but they will mainly take care of the children, following them day by day during their progress, obviously constantly supported by our operators. Seeing as our aim is to create a familiar atmosphere around the guests, it is necessary that the European volunteers are well-disposed to take on habits and rules which are internal to the Home without creating bad moods or differences. For example, we ask the volunteers to share and participate to the meals with the family (lived as moments of communion and dialogue). Smoking and the use of drugs are forbidden in the House. The consume of alcohol must be restricted to meal-times and especially controlled. It is possible to receive hosts in the common spaces but only after having spoken about it with the staff. The volunteers also have to tidy up and clean their own rooms. Casa Betania is a building which has 12 rooms, 9 bathrooms and 2 kitchens, 2 recreation rooms, 1 dining room, 1 cloakroom, 1 living room and an office area. The House is surrounded by a garden of 2000 mq and it is in an area which is in part popular and the rest of it is middle-bourgeois, not far from St. Peter Square in Rome. The association is near the Policlinico Gemelli, in a green area on the Roman hills, higher than the centre of Rome. It is well-supplied with buses and undergrounds.
B. Proposed activities for EVS volunteers
The volunteers will be introduced in the various activities in order to receive a total view of the whole project and to understand better the specificities of each situation. This way, the volunteer's experience becomes more incisive and concentrated. This modality helps the formative, linguistic and interpersonal development, in the constant relationship with the staff and with the users (mothers and children). The welcoming of the European volunteers in Casa Betania offers them the possibility of meeting people who come from other countries and experiencing a communitarian life context very different from the one they come from. We would like to clarify that our association has always invested on formation. Our context is made of a constant sperimental path and of adaptations in order to conciliate the hosts needs and the volunteers work. To get to know the aims of the association, the young people will immediately take part in the staff meeting, which issue is not only to decide relation and operative modalities but also to grow up in the solidarity and welcoming practise. We consider important helping the volunteers in the insertion making them feel "welcomed", respected and giving them a constant support during their voluntary path. To this end, all the volunteers will be supported by the staff but they will still have the possibility of making reference to a tutor, link between the volunteers and the managers of the House. The tutor will have relevance in the initial period of insertion but also as personal support listening to anything you have to say, or as reference point for any sort of problems. Apart from the forming meetings, control meetings are also organized to gush over all the emotions and think about motivations and experiences lived in the House. The forming meetings are always group-meetings. This allows to learn the bases of human relationships: welcoming, listening, observing, respect for other people, meaning of relation, verbal and nonverbal communication and the project of the Family House.
The European volunteers will be involved in all the activities of the association but they will be mainly concentrated on the activities which concern children. The eldest will be taken to school while the little ones will stay at home and they will be entertained by the volunteers. We please ask for patience, love for children and creativity. During the morning the volunteers can also collaborate with the operators doing the housework (cleaning, washing and ironing, cooking meals etc...). In the afternoon the volunteers will help the elder children with their homework and they will also lead recreational, artistic activities and laboratories (fairy-tales and games). The volunteers will also have the possibility of join periodocally meetings or other activities of the association for the diffusion of the hosting culture according to their vocations and interests.
The evs volunteers lodged in Casa Betania will work in two turns according to the needs of the House. The two timetables are from 7.00 a.m. to 2.00 p.m. or from 2.00 p.m. till 8.00 p.m. Their work will not take up more than 7 hours per day and it will not pass 35 hours a week. They will have 2 days off per week and 2 days off for each month of voluntary service done. We will try to mediate between their requests and the House needs.

C. Volunteer profiles and recruitment process
In our experience we have host a lot of girls who have done a good project being more sensible and near to the problems of our hosts. For this reason we would be pleased to host girls but it is not a necessary requirements or a discrimination. We do not require neither specific psychological and social abilities or particular educational qualification. The most important thing is motivation towards the project and the availability in joining activities opening your personality, receiving and giving. Obviously the candidates must love children and must not have problems relating with them. We expect the volunteers to be sociable people, which pay attention to the fatigues of people and have an easy ability of adaptation, and mental flexibility. The girls must not make use of alcohol and drugs. We would also prefer the volunteers slept in the House in order to guarantee their security and so that they can easily integrate understanding the House's values, for example the extended family value first of all. We are open to collaboration with any sort of sending association without any discrimination. We will contact all the candidates who are interested in the project, in collaboration with our coordinating association IBO Italy. They will do a first selection based on motivation and attitude towards the project, getting in touch the volunteers and their sending associations which have personally met them and that, for this reason, know them better. Then the staff of the House will personally contact the candidates explaining the details of the project and taking a decision based on our feelings and experiences.
D. Special needs (if applicable)
The House has no problems in hosting people who come from poor backgrounds from the economic, social cultural and geographic point of view. However, because of the hard life-style of our hosts, it would be necessary for the volunteers not to have serious health problems or disabilities. In this case we think they would not be able to unroll the service with intensity and serenity. In the past we have already lodged volunteers with less opportunities and we want to carry on doing it. For example we remember girls who came from poor backgrounds or from situations of exclusion. We also remember a girl who lived in an institute and who made a great change acquiring serenity, self-confidence but also finding the love of a "family" which she had missed during her childhood.
Our staff is available to support the volunteers who are lodged in the House, from a human point of view but also psychologically and socially. The volunteers will have a mentor who will follow them during the insertion in the House but also during the following phases. All the volunteers will participate to the group meetings and there will be special attention towards girls with less opportunities. We will individually consider the case of each candidate in order to provide the necessary and appropriate support in regard of every specific discomfort and need of the volunteer.

E. Risk prevention, safety and protection
In order to reduce the failure risks of the project we will organize, every two weeks, a two hours long meeting held by psychologists and sociologists in which the volunteers can compare each other on the problems they have faced and on the difficulties they have had not only working but also personal and psychological problems. Apart from this, regular meetings will be organized, led by the volunteer's mentor, during which the girls can compare each other or talk about problems faced in the House. We think the crisis and the decrease of motivation are possible when a young person participates to a social project as important as this one. Anyway, all the operators of Casa Betania will always be available to listen and support the volunteers during their path. Casa Betania is, and will always be for the evs volunteers, a true family. We believe that opening your personality towards other people, the dialogue and the respect are elements which have always marked us and that will allow us to prevent and win the crisis. We ask the volunteers sincerity, dialogue and obviously reciprocal respect.

The presence of young volunteers is an enormous richness for our project; they represent a power source, enthusiasm and creativity proving with its own service a sense of solidarity and condivision. In Casa Betania young Europeans can freely express these potentialities and they can confront themselves with our hosts, who also come from different origins and cultures. Thanks to the European voluntary service, our community can open even more towards an international dimension and make its host activity more and more rich and incisive. The first European volunteers arrived at Casa Betania in 2000. During the last 7 years we had the pleasure of hosting about 20 European volunteers coming from different countries ( France, Greece, Spain, Romania, Lithuania, Hungary, Germany, Turkey, Belgium, Estonia, the Netherlands and Sweden). Each of them with different personalities and experiences in their past, each person has left something of them in our House: someone happiness and expansivity, others discretion and sweetness, and many more serenity and liveliness but also fragility and daily hard work. Casa Betania has had the pleasure of share with each of them the emotions that a voluntary experience provokes in a reality like ours. Some of them still come back to see us even if lots of years have passed. Others have even moved to Rome, they have found a job and consider our "family" an important reference point in their life. But with others the contact unfortunately ended because they had difficulties in integrating, opening themselves to other people without problems. Sometimes the service has been suspended before the end but we are sure that something of this experience has taken place in their hearts as all of us can not forget the time these girls stayed here.

The Social Cooperative "Accoglienza" operates, since its constitution in 1990, in order to promote and develop the welcoming of every person who, for family or social lacks, needs support. Casa Betania is the first host structure open by the cooperative. It's a Family-House born in 1993 thanks to the helpfulness of the Dolfini family and to the enthusiasm of a large group of volunteers. Casa Betania wants to share with each host a piece of path towards the acquisition of serenity and autonomy. The Home is inspired to Christian ideals in the respect of every different person. Casa Betania is open to the welcoming of pregnant women or with children having difficult situations. In a familiar context it offers board and lodging, work, psychological, social and spiritual support until the women reach more autonomy. Moreover the House welcomes children, since their birth until they are about 8 years old, on signal of the social service and/or of the Juvenile Court. For each host a specific educative project is elaborated hoping that the Home experience represents only a passage moment in a bigger plan project based on the needs of each person. In 2002 the Cooperative gave birth to a second welcoming structure "La Casa di Chala, Andrea e Miriam". The idea was born in order to give an answer to the increasing demand of hosting children with psycological or fisical disabilities, especially from hospitals. Among the children who are welcomed in Casa Betania during these last years, some of them have serious disabilities. Unlike the other little hosts, these last ones have lots of difficulties in finding a family available to foster or to adopt them extending for too long the period spent in Casa Betania. After an analysis of the mostly unheard needs, Casa Betania began a very important intervention. Often our hosts, once they have found a job, were left with the big problem of finding a house, seeing as many owners prefer not to let out flats to foreign women with children. So the Cooperative l' Accoglienza offered to be the titular of the rent and warrantor for the people who asked for lodging. This intervention, which began in 1994, aims to the achievement of women's autonomy through middle passages. Moreover, the association takes over various activities in order to spread out the hosting culture. The Cooperative l'Accoglienza organizes periodically activities which must promote and make people aware of fosterage through informative meetings which have place in parishes, schools. The meetings, held by psychologists and welfare workers with the support and testimony of families who had the children in care, aim to give a basic information to who approches a child fosterage. Whoever is interested is then addressed towards the involvement in forming courses which, in the past, were directly managed by the Cooperative and plan, in the future, a collaboration with social services. The Cooperative considers important to offer the opportunity of reflection to whoever would like to be in charge of a child through meetings with couples who are already in charge of a child and also visits to the Family House so that people who are interested in it can meet the child's world which is lacking of affection. Since 1999 the association publishes a two-monthly periodical " Di tutti i colori" which till now has reached the circulation of over 3.500 copies. The editorial line of the periodical is the social engagement one and the diffusion of solidarity themes, charity work, civil engagement, justice and social equity. The addresses of the newspaper are all the people who, during these years, are got in touch with the Cooperative, as well as the parishes, Rome's Curacy, single representative of the public institutions with which the Cooperative collaborates ( Rome's Commune, Rome's province, etc...). Since June 2000 the Cooperative carries out a day hosting service for 35 children who are between 0-8 years old called "Nido d'Ape". It is a support activity for our hosts who have to conciliate the role of mothers and workers and aims to the protection of their children offering them a healthy and welcoming atmosphere. The service is active 12 months per year, ten hours a day, from 8.30 to 18.30, from Monday to Friday even during the days in which the schools are closed for Christmas, Easter and summer holidays. Since its opening over 170 children have been welcomed. Finally, the association offers the possibility of professional forming and work opportunities for women who are given hospitality in the Home. The aim is to offer them a calm working space in which compare yourself, grow and reach a certain autonomy and social integration. The "mother's laboratory" of Casa Betania has birth, since the opening of the Family Home, from the creation of sawing laboratories, bricolage and handmade creations. Since the end of 2004 a shop called "Da Tutti i Paesi" is open with the project of presenting to the territory - as well as to the friends - the handmade works produced in the laboratory but also to contribute in the self-financing of the Cooperative's activities. The general aims of the association can be summarized in the following points:
- helping lonely women to face the maternity and build their own autonomy;
- helping children, who usually come from cases of abandon or abuse, to find serenity and balance in order to face the future (going back to the original family or beeing adopted);
- attending mothers during the process from the lack of autonomy to the acquisition of autonomy with the help, during the research, of a home and a job which also garantees them an economic autonomy;
- diffusion of the hosting culture;
The Home is managed by Silvia and Giuseppe, overseers of the structure. Obviously, they make use of kind volunteers for the care of the hosts and of the house. These people are formed in the Cooperative every 15 days in order to receive the guide information from the educative point of view. The secretary staff instead is constituted by some operators: one part deals with the administrative management, another group instead leads the specific projects of the hosts.

http://ec.europa.eu/youth/evs/aod/hei_form_en.cfm?EID=42000407216