A. Project environment: profile of the organisation and local community

Lodz, where project takes place, is a town midmost Poland (2 hours from Warsaw) with over 600.000 habitants. It's not richest city, but has a very unique atmosphere with many historical buildings. You can also find here a lot of green places- we have biggest sanctuary forest and park situated inside of city in Poland! At the present time Lodz proudly celebrating its multicultural traditions organising each year International Festival of Four Cultures. Lodz is also the academic centre with several public and privet Universities and colleges. Probably the most famous is the Film School from which graduated such well-known directors as Roman Polanski, Krzysztof Kieslowski.

Public Library Lodz-Widzew is one of five city libraries. It is a self-governed culture institution. The city of Lodz organizes takes care of them. The Library has 10 branch libraries in its structure. These establishments are located in Widzew (area of Lodz city) quarter at newer housing estates. The whole Widzew quarter has about 139 thousand citizens.

Three establishments are only for adults, two of them are for adults but have nooks for children, five establishments are universal (for children, the youth and adults), meanwhile two establishments are only for children.

All libraries are entirely computerized and have access to the Internet.

In 2006 Widzew Libraries registered about 13 300 readers.

Among the institutions that cooperate with Libraries there are City Kindergartens, Primary Schools, Secondary Schools, the Centre of Language Culture and the Culture of Japan at the Archeological and Etnographic Museum, the Association of Polish Librarians, other City Libraries, Orange IMAX Cinema, ZOO in Lodz, Day Centers and Senior Centers.

B. Proposed activities for EVS volunteers

The main goal of volunteer's activities would be creating "European Library Clubs" for older pre-school children and children from primary schools. Clubs are to be founded in seven libraries of Widzew quarter, which perform cultural activities for children.

The purpose of these clubs' activities would be:

- arousing interest in countries that belong to the European Union with the focus on the volunteer's mother country.

- developing children's artistic interests,

- promotion of European literature for children,

- promotion of libraries.

Within the scope of volunteer's activities, a volunteer would arrange European Club associated to different country in each library. In the Club, the volunteer, with the library staff and young readers, willing to participate in these preparations, would be responsible for organizing displays of children books with the focus on the characters from these countries, guides, maps, pictures that show scenery, monuments, accessories related to that country. Arranging the libraries would be also volunteer's responsibility.

Children, the youth and adults will be invited to visit Clubs. Visits will include chats about that particular country. In each Club, once a week, there will be conversations of a volunteer and children entitled "Friends' Talks". The volunteer will have the opportunity to do artistic contests and competitions about that particular country, reading books (also in original), short theatric forms (based on the adventures of characters from children literature), various shows prepared by invited guests and children or children themselves e.g. French fashion show in French Club or Italian cuisine show in Italian Club. We assume that each Club will have a characteristic name given by children.

We also plan to get in touch with organizations that have relationships with the above mentioned countries (e.g. friendship societies, consulates, students from particular philologies) and which could tell some interesting things about that country.

A volunteer will produce photographic documentation from each stage of Club's establishing and operation. This documentation will serve to prepare multimedia shows or organize photographic displays.

We expect to have a ceremony at the end of the voluntary service, where multimedia shows and children stagings will be presented, prizes will be awarded in artistic contest. Maybe it will be possible to do a "fairy tale mix" i.e. common staging performed by children from particular Clubs, who stage a story with characters from various books of European literature. The finale is to be colourful, cheerful and with momentum.

Thanks to participation in our project the volunteer will become familiar with:

- pecularity of the work in Polish public library,

- many interesting people: readers, teachers, employees of institutions cooperating with libraries, librarians,

- Polish culture and language,

- Polish books,

- Lodz and our every day life

C. Volunteer profiles and recruitment process

Due to specific character of work and the project's guidelines we think that the best candidate would be a person who:

- is interested in literature and likes reading,

- is talented and interested in art, music; is creative and inventive,

- He or she should like to realize their own ideas, not only participate in something prepared by others.

- wants to work with children - is patient, inderstanding and open

- is optimistic and has a sense of humour

Base of recruitment process will be CV and motivation letter of applying volunteer; we'll put our attention on volunteer's interests concurring with aims and theme of project.

E. Risk prevention, safety and protection

In order to ensure safety for a volunteer, we will perform the following actions:

- general training related to the rules of work safety and hygiene will take place

- a volunteer will be familiarized with some points of Work Regulations that is in force in the City Library £ódŸ-Widzew, which are important for his or her safety, by the Director of the Library,

- volunteers will be familiarized with content-related work in the library and with the work with a reader by the manager of that library branch,

- they will be familiarized with the rules of work with computer - by the manager of that library branch,

- a volunteer will commute from one branch to other ones, that are located in different spots of Widzew quarter, with a mentor or coordinator.

During the first week of the project we will organize a meeting between the staff and a volunteer. These libraries that take part in the project will also participate in that meeting. Integration and getting to know each other is the purpose here.

Next meetings are planned once a month. There will be an opportunity to discuss activities undertaken so far, experiences exchange etc.

Every library that will entertain a volunteer is already familiar with general guidelines of that project. They are aware of responsibility for a volunteer and hir or her actions. Individual features of personell of the chosen establishments, i.e. engagement in work, optimism, creativity and reliability make a volunteer feel safe, needed and welcomed with great warmth.

http://ec.europa.eu/youth/evs/aod/hei_form_en.cfm?EID=58000375941