A. Project environment: profile of the organisation and local community
The project in which the EVS volunteer is introduced involves mainly the "Genitorialità" group which is parted in the drug addicts Community of the Cascina Contina in Rosate (MI), where the volunteer will live and share the daily life during the permanence. His/her role will be to take care of kids from 0 to 6 years old, who could also be drug addicts' children, accompanied in this engagement by a teacher during the mornings from Monday to Friday from 9.00 a.m. to 12.00 a.m. in the community nursery, and in the afternoon of the same days they will have to follow them in games for other 3 hours and take care of the younger ones when the parents are involved in community activities. The children to follow will be at least 2 and the maximum is 4. So it is fundamental for the volunteer to love young kids and not to have difficulties relating with them. During the weekend the volunteer can go out and participate to the recreational community activities and improve his/her contribution in suggestions and organization. In case that another volunteer is introduced, he will live in the minors group (from 14 to 18 years old) in the same Community Cascina Contina di Rosate (MI). So he will share their ordinary life above all in the recreational moments at the end of his work or during the weekend, helping the other operators to organize the free time of the hosts. So the volunteer will have his two free days during the week and not in the weekend, with the exception of one free weekend per month. All the volunteers can also organize activities together if they want. We can organize recreational, sport activities, trips or laboratories in the Park or even outside the community. This will depend on the volunteers and on their abilities/interests.
Contina is a big country farmstead, placed at about 1 km from Rosate, in Milan province. The town counts about 5.000 inhabitants. Its economy is based on farming, cattle breeding and on the industry. The town is about 21 km far from Milan and they are linked by regular buses. The Farmstead Contina is placed inside the Parco Agricolo South-Milan, an agricultural area that is extend in south-east and west of the county town, including 61 communes of the province of Milan. Since 2001 Cascina Contina is the site of the first Park Point of the agricultural park South- Milan. This is a place in which informative materials of the Park are at tourists disposal and in which collective initiatives for the knowledge of the park and activities for environmental education addressed to the students of the schools are organized. Moreover Cascina Contina is placed on the borderline with the Park of the Ticino, a protected area of 15000 hectare that includes the provinces of Milan, Varese and Pavia. The park is a wonderful protected area in the Pianura Padana in which many species of animals and plants live. In the Park there are many naturalistic, historic and artistic itineraries that offer the visitors the possibility of walking tours, by bike, by canoe or by horse through woods, fields and dirt roads.
The Community Cascina Contina tries to preserve as much as possible the ordinary life, for this reason from Monday to Friday the days are occupied by work, considered as a "pedagogical-rehabilitative"support indispensable for the personal path towards the (re)acquisition of autonomy and individual responsibility. So the suggestion of work inside the community is not finalized to the production and it is unrolled with times and modalities that try to reach mainly an educative and therapeutic target.
In the morning breakfast is cooked for 7.30 a.m.; at 8.00 a.m. the guests go in the different laboratories internal to the community (carpentry, machine shop, architectural restoration, agricultural activities), others instead engage in cleaning the houses and cooking lunch. The children go to school or to the community nursery. At midday the volunteers leave work to eat all together at 12.30 a.m. At 13.30 a.m the volunteers resume the working activities. From 17.30 p.m. to 19.30 p.m. They have free time to take a shower, tidy up their room, help setting the table and sometimes even to cook the dinner, staying together with the others guests. After dinner from about 20.30 p.m. to 23.00 p.m. There is the possibility of watching a film in the video room, or using the recreation room (feed of billiards, pinball, ping pong,....) or going out for planned activities (theatrical performances or concerts). Once a week, the minors meet in order to plan the recreational activities of the weekend and to discuss on possible projects or long-term suggestions. On Saturday morning the volunteers normally work till 12.00 a.m., while in the afternoon and on Sunday they rest and dedicate their time to recreational activities organized from time to time both inside and outside the community. In the community the use of drugs is not allowed and the consume of alcohol must be restricted to meal-times and in the occasion of parties. The Community Cascina Contina is parted into 3 houses that welcome the different hosts (drug addicts, minors and people affected by HIV and AIDS): each one of them has (double) rooms, bathrooms and common showers, a kitchen, a dining room and a living room.
B. Proposed activities for EVS volunteers
Contina is a project with a strong human impact. Our community context offers the volunteers who intend to live it seriously, the possibility to test themselves mainly as regards their relational abilities. The confrontation with such different and rich life stories, at times even dramatic, of the guests and operators in a place in which the volunteers work towards a constructive and planning reprocessing, can deeply enrich the volunteer and help him to reach a self and world knowledge. Contina offers a path of personal but also community growth in the cohabitation and in the confrontation with support people in the laboratories or in the care of children in the nursery. The volunteer's presence is a precious contribution in our community. It is an external point of view, unknown to the game of the parts in which often operators and hosts meet each other. The volunteer is someone who chooses to live for a period of time a particular experience without making his/her role become too determinate and professional, for this reason his/her ability of refering his/her life and his/her reflections on this experience that he/she is doing, necessarily different from the people who live in the community, enriches and enlarges the points of view of those who compete with him/her. An other resource can be underlined by the possibility of enrichment of the European dimension of our project sharing with hosts and operators their own culture and traditions.
The volunteers join the other operators in the following activities:
in the nursery with the younger kids, children of the drug addict hosts;
in the promotion, in the production and in the accompaniment of the hosts in recreational activities both outside and inside the community: visit of exhibitions, organization of sport activities (football tournaments, trips by bike, etc....), concerts, suggestion of artistic laboratories (musical, theatrical,.....);
when the volunteer familiarizes with the territory and the structures of the social and sanitary services, sometimes we ask him/her to accompany the hosts for physical examinations or dates in other structures (Services for drug addictions, Social Services of the Communes....).
His/her timetables, which are defined in a calendar and timetable, are fixed and arranged from time to time depending on the community and volunteer needs. In any way his/her work will never surpass the 7 daily hours and the 35 weekly ones. The volunteer will have two free days every week and 2 free days for every month of permanence (to arrange with the staff). We request the disponibility to contribute in taking care of the house (we require a collaboration in turns in cooking the meals, in cleaning etc....trying not to create discriminations inside the Farmstead).
C. Volunteer profiles and recruitment process
We do not request particular informative experiences but real motivation and desire of getting in the game. However we can suggest the volunteer to inform himself/herself before the departure about the problems that concern drug addiction. When they start their service in the community, we ask the volunteers to be available in paying attention and in welcoming the advices of the managers and operators, sometimes more expert in comparison with them in facing complex situations that arise every day in the community. We request ability of adaptation and autonomy, desire of getting to know the community, participating to the experience and above all involving themselves. We are disposed to collaborate with each sending association without any problem. We engage in contacting each candidate interested in our project, answering to everybody and guaranteeing transparency and seriousness in the selection process. We will control together with IBO Italy, our coordination, motivation and aptitude towards the project trying to take a more aware and reasoned decision.
D. Special needs (if applicable)
We are able to host young people with fewer opportunities (with economical, educational, geographical or cultural problems) thanks to our experience in welcoming people and elaborating their discomfort and thanks to a professional staff present 24 hours a day in the community. In our past EVS experience, we noticed that if we make the meeting and the contact with underprivileged people easier, we can give them but also receive more awareness and sensibility. We are ready and available to help any volunteer in the elaboration of their discomfort getting to know themselves better and improving their abilities. The Cascina Contina is able to lodge also physical handicapped people, because we have created appropriate places (without architectural barriers) in order to allow the access to the community for people with difficulties in walking. In the last years we have yet welcomed volunteers with motorial deficit, and this was a positive experience for both, especially because they were very independent people. We want to underline that volunteers with fewer opportunities must be able to take care of themselves during the daily life. We will consider special needs singularly and we engage ourselves to give the suitable support.
E. Risk prevention, safety and protection
Until the volunteer is not integrated in our structure, we do not ask him/her to take any responsibility upon him-self or herself, other people or things. However, he/she is never abandoned in situations which could put him/her in difficulty. The community guarantees the presence of resident operators 24 hours a day, who, as will as never entrust responsibilities of important decisions to the volunteer, also represent a reference point for his/her requests, doubts and vents. Moreover, we dispose of doctors and of a medical ambulatory inside the community; we guarantee an excellent board, considering that the food is produced by us. Crisis are possible and sometimes healthy.....even if we do not entrust any responsibilities to the volunteers, we ask them seriousness and honesty. Because of the hosts that they welcome, our communities are difficult and hard places. We are ready to welcome and support the volunteers who have awareness of this and desire to test themselves in front of this challenge.

http://ec.europa.eu/youth/evs/aod/hei_form_en.cfm?EID=42000407401