The "Club for disabled people and their friends in the district Steinfurt and the area (CeBeeF)" was founded in 1977 as a non-profit organisation; today it counts more than 500 members. The aim of the CeBeeF is integration and support of disabled people in different scopes of their life. With free support of mostly young people the association organises free time activities as well as courses, like training reading and writing or cooking to improve the autonomy of the disabled. Another field of the CeBeeF is a supported living for a disabled person, who doesn't need all daylong assistance. Today we take care of 36 disabled people.

The CeBeeF is located in the district Steinfurt in the Northwest of Nordrhein-Westfalen. In this area, which is spread over 1.800 km2, live about 442.000 people and 70% of this district is an agricultural land. The administrative office is in Rheine, the biggest town in the district Steinfurt with 76.355 inhabitants.

With a group of young, disabled people the CeBeeF travelled in September 2004 to Somerset in the south of England. The aim of this journey was a comparison of different living conditions for disabled people with the focus mainly to the autonomy of the individuals in England and Germany.

B.
In the coalescing Europe it's important to give disabled people opportunities to get to know foreign countries and cultures. If they spend their holiday abroad, they only get an incomplete impression of the life there. But in an intensive contact to a European volunteer they get the chance to get to know details of a foreign country, get the chance to loose their reservations and get the chance to train a tolerant behaviour.

If we become a hosting organisation, we can introduce the volunteer in the work with the disabled people here in Germany. He will get to know structures and aims of this field here. He also gets to know the possibilities what companies can organise for this group with the support of honorary people.

The volunteer finds out much about the culture in a foreign country: He learns its language and gets practical knowledge about Germany while living here. He can abolish frontiers in the direct contact with Germans.

In addition to this the program of the CeBeeF can be amplified: Together with the German volunteers he can offer new courses which e.g. fit to his hobbies. He could report about his home country and give the disabled as well as the young volunteers an understanding of his own culture.

In the cooperation with other volunteers he can learn how to treat disabled and how to work with them in the free time. He learns to take charge of needy people and learns to work in a team together with kindred spirits.

C.
Volunteers should have high sensibility to work with disabled and to support them in their development. Open mindedness and interest in working together with others would be helpful. It would be good, if the volunteers had hobbies like music or sports, so that they can introduce the disabled into the special fields.
An organization, which takes care for the work with disabled people, is preferred.

E.
The local hosting organization provides an appropriate accommodation possibility for the volunteer. According to the place of the project, the volunteer will live in Ibbenbüren or Westerkappeln in a dwelling, which many volunteers are sharing or in the accommodation of the clinical center Ibbenbüren. Here the volunteer has its own room, kitchen and a bath is a common room, which is available for several persons.

Between the mentor and the volunteer periodically conversations will take place in order to accompany progress and to help the volunteer with the solution of probably arising problems. Additionally the mentor guarantees the receive of continual support for the volunteer. For the first time in the project a training plan will be arranged. Volunteers receive each necessary support for the realization of their tasks and enough time to get into the new job.

The training plan will help in the integration in the local district and the surrounding field the project.

The co-ordinating organization ensures that the volunteer participates in the on-arrival-training and the mid-term-meeting. EVS- volunteers receive an appropriate language training during their stay, which is organized by the coordinating organization.

Co-workers of the co-ordinating organization look after the volunteer. They also organize meetings, which take place every 4-6 weeks, where all volunteers from the region meet each other. In special meetings they become acquainted intensively with the German culture. In the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the EVS a conversation between the volunteer, the mentor and the co-ordinating organization takes place and there are special meetings only for the mentors, where they can exchange their experiences. The youth-welfare-office has developed some quality-standards, which include the on-arrival-conversation and the mid-term-conversation and also a questionnaire , which is to be filled by the mentor and the volunteer in the beginning of the EVS.