A.
Our centre for children with speech impediments was founded 40 years ago ans is located in Dresden. Dresden is a big city with about 512.000 inhabitants. Through the city flows the river Elbe.
We are working after the concept and methods of Friedrich Froebel (he ´invented` the first kindergarten in 1840). In 2007 we moved to a new built building which is also suitable for physically disabled children. The house is divided into 6 living areas, each with 8 children . Every living area has 3 double bedrooms, 2 single bedrooms, 3 showers, 1 kitchen and one living room. Furthermore the house has a big dinning room, a small gymnasium, a workshop (after the concept of Froebel), a play room and two rooms for therapies.
Our team consists of 10 pedagogues, 2 housekeeping women and 1 caretaker. The housekeeping women care for the food and they clean the house. But they also bake and cook together with the children and they support the children in cleaning their rooms. The caretaker is responsible for the house and the whole compound. Often the children help him to clean, to repair or to plant.
Our institution is located close to the so called "Dresdener Heide" and close to the river Elbe. A big wooden playground and a game enclosure are only a few minutes away from our centre.
To go to the centre of Dresden is very easy because the bus station is only 5 minutes away from our institution. On our compound are located a governmental school, our all-day care centre and the residential home, where the children live during the week.
Our children come from Dresden and the surrounding districts and some of them live in our institution from Monday till Friday. The children have a special daily routine…they go to school every morning and after school to our all-day care centre. During the day they have special therapies and after school we offer special workshops to them.
We try to improve the language skills of our children and prepare them for a reintegration in a ´normal` primary or secondary school. Beside this daily routine we offer holiday activities and holiday camps.

B.
Working and learning opportunities:
The young volunteers will be integrated in all daily activities regarding to their interests and their potentialities. All of our staff members are open minded, so it will be easy for the volunteers to feel comfortable in the team. At the beginning the volunteers will work close together with the staff members to get to know the different areas of our institution. Later, the volunteers will work more and more independently. During the work with the children the volunteers will get an interesting insight into the social and cultural life of our children. Furthermore the volunteers will learn how to deal with the different problems of our children, e.g. their difficult social background or their personal deficits (speech impediments). Therefore the volunteers need to display sensitivity, patience, insistence and consistency.
During the work with our children, the volunteers will enable their personal strength, their musical sense, creativity, phantasy and their rhetorical, acting and athletic skills. Furthermore we believe, that the cooperative and collaborative teamwork with the pedagogues, teachers, therapists, children, parents, doctors and the other national volunteers will help the European volunteers to develop their own skills and also their linguistically abilities. The volunteers have to work 35h a week including the language course.

Fields of activity:
Regarding to our special daily routine and our concept we will offer a great variety of activities to our volunteers. They can take part in all daily activities, regarding to their interests. Furthermore they can also realize their own ideas e.g. to create new activities for the children. If the volunteers are interested, they can also get in insight into the administration tasks of the institution

Possible tasks:
- supporting the children during their day
- supporting the staff members and helping the children during the English lessons
- supporting the staff members and helping the children during the language training and the different therapies
- carry out workshops together with the children (creative workshops, or workshops with sports and so on)
- developing and realizing own workshops (regarding to the interests of the volunteer)
- supporting the staff members in preparing festivals, outdoor activities, holiday camps and so on
- supporting the staff members in administration tasks

C.
The volunteers we are interested in should love children. They shall be friendly, patiently and sympathetic. We expect open minded, creative and high motivated young people. They should be able to correspond to the variety of our children. Very important are reliability, concsiousness of responsibility and the ability to work in a team.Tthe volunteer has to be interested in learning or improving German. We especially invite young men to our project.
We are open to work with any sending organisation.

D. -
E.
The working conditions in our project are related to the needs of our children. We will make sure that our volunteers will never be alone with a whole group. During the own workshops of the volunteers a pedagogue will support them or the group will be divided.
The volunteers will live in a residential home (which belongs to our centre for children with speech impediments). They will have their own room with bathroom and they will share the kitchen with the children and pedagogues (only during the week). In the residential home exist all necessary furniture and electrical equipments. We will provide bed clothes. The volunteers have to clean their rooms by themselves.
We don't plan to host underage volunteers.
We already gained a lot of experiences in sending and hosting volunteers and beside this we continuously read all publications from our National Agency. So we are aware of a lot of problems that might occur and we are well prepared to solve them.

1. Home Sickness
We always involve our current international and national volunteers in the pre-departure arrangements for the new volunteers, e.g. we give them the e-mail addresses of the new volunteers, so that they can get in contact with them before their arrival. We believe that this pre-departure contact helps our new volunteers to feel more comfortable with the unknown situation and also prevents fears and prejudices.

We have special rituals on the arrival day of a new volunteer, e.g. the tutor from the hosting project and one or two national volunteers pick him/her up from the train station. Before this they have decorated the room of the new volunteer with "WELCOME"- posters and other small things and prepared a small dinner-party for them.
During the first week the staff members of the hosting project or the national volunteers ´guide` the new ones. They go together to all necessary authorities, make a trip through the city and so on.
We use every contact with the hosting project to ask about our new volunteers to intervene if necessary.

2. Loneliness
Dresden is a very historical city with international flair, a lot of places of interests, small coffeehouses and nice pubs. Most of the staff members and also most of the national volunteers live in Dresden, they will invite and accompany the new volunteers to activities and cultural events.
We support our volunteers in buying them a special card for trains, which offers a discount on the tickets. This helps them to stay in personal contact with their new friends, even with them from the seminars organised by the National Agency.

3. Language Training
All our volunteers take part in a weekly language training (German as a foreign language) in Dresden. There are different courses regarding to the level of knowledge of the volunteers, so everyone can take part in the course which fits him/her best. The language trainings are offered during the whole voluntary service.

4. Underchallenged / Overworked
The target group of the hosting project is very grateful: curious, open minded children. If the volunteers love children, they will enjoy the work in this project and they should not feel overworked.
During the first three month of the voluntary service the volunteers will get an insight into the daily routine of our institution. After this first three-month period, the volunteers should be able to offer small workshops regarding to their own interests and skills to the children. Therefore we talk to them about their ideas and wishes but also about their fears and expectations. Furthermore we assist our volunteers with developing a schedule and realising the workshop. Regularly the tutor of the hosting project carries out meetings with the volunteers to avoid an underchallenging.

5. Mismatching
For a few years the JugendSozialwerk Nordhausen e.V. is working as a sending organisation too. Therefore we know how difficult it is for the volunteers to get an objective impression of the future hosting project and its requirements.
We try to get in contact with our prospective volunteers as soon as possible (e-mail or phone) and we motivate them to ask us anything they like and tell us all fears and concerns they have.
We know that it will take some time to deal with children with speech impediments and that this could be a risk. But we will advise some books to the volunteers before they will start their voluntary service and the staff members will introduce them very carefully during the first weeks.
After the first volunteers have finished their voluntary year, we will ask them to write a report about their experiences. Later we will send this reports to our prospective volunteers, so that they can get an insight into the daily routine of the school and their future tasks.

6. Mentoring
We have a tutor in every hosting project (trained by our German National Agency).
The advantage of the hosting project is, that the volunteers will be integrated in a small team of staff members, so the tutor will be able to have daily contacts with the volunteers.
The staff members working in the administration of the JugendSozialwerk Nordhausen e.V. will use every opportunity to get in personal contact with the volunteers. Furthermore they are responsible for keeping the contact with the sending organisation, controlling the compliance made in the project description and in the Activity Agreement and organising joint activities between the volunteers from the different hosting projects of the JugendSozialwerk Nordhausen e.V.


We know that volunteers often keep their problems for themselves, e.g. to solve them alone or not to bother their tutor. In this special situation it can be difficult to find a constructive solution, because very often the volunteers have already made their decision to leave the project. To avoid this we carry out regular meetings between the volunteer, the contact person from the administration, the leader of the hosting project and the tutor of the volunteer.
The first meeting takes place before the arrival of the volunteer (certainly without the volunteer), here we discuss the "arrival ceremony" and the settling-in period.
Later the meetings will be quarterly to reflect the past three month and to discuss e.g. the own workshops of the volunteers. Approximately six weeks before the end of the voluntary service we carry out a meeting to evaluate the project, to prepare the reports for the National Agency, to prepare the YouthPass or to discuss about possible prospective projects of the volunteer.
In spite of all our precautions we know that it could happen that one of our volunteers would like to leave the project. We always convey them that this is uncomplicated and has no personal consequences for them. But we attach great importance to exhaust all possibilities to redress the causes for the wish to leave (discussing the problem with the volunteer, the hosting project, the sending project or with all together).
If the volunteer still wants to leave the project we carry out an evaluation to reflect together with the volunteer which useful skills and experiences he/she gained during the voluntary service (despite the fact of leaving).