PROJECT ENVIRONMENT

The village of Salakas is not big, quiet and cosy provincial village with just about 400 constant residents. Most of them are elderly people or families at social risk. The numbers of youth are small; almost all of them study in bigger cities. The village has a post office, junior high school, an elderate, old people's home, library, 4 food shops, pharmacy, medical cabinet, pub (open during weekend evenings only), house of culture. The village is surrounded by pinewoods, with the 6th largest lake nearby. Salakas is 150 km from the capital Vilnius, 200 km from the city of Kaunas. The bus service is quite limited with these cities. There is 25-40 km to the nearest bigger towns with shopping centres.
The village becomes more animated in summer; tourists come to rest near the lake, homestead owners spend there holidays here too.
Salakas is famous for its cultural heritage; it has one of the tallest churches in Lithuania, unique wooden architecture.

The volunteers will live in the office building of the park's directorate. There is an attic converted into a guest house with all the necessary amenities. The volunteers will share the kitchen with the staff of the park's directorate. They will be provided with all the necessary things: computers, binoculars and other equipment to carry out their tasks. Bicycles will also be available.
Volunteers with at least minimal musical skills will be able to join the village's cultural life: attend folk dancing lessons, play music in the ethnographic ensemble, later, after learning some Lithuanian, participate in the theatre activities.

ACTIVITIES

  They will be free to initiate actions of environmental protection, hikes and many other activities with the village community.
Having acquainted with the park's territory, environmental, cultural heritage and the exposition of the park visitors' centre, the volunteers will the able to conduct guided tours for foreign tourists and later after learning some Lithuanian to Lithuanian groups.

The volunteers will have an opportunity to learn various methods of work while assisting the park's specialists during the monitoring of biodiversity. For example, the monitoring of Birds of prey, Otern, Pygmy Owls, Tenmalm's Owls, Great Btterns, Black terns and others. One of the best ornithologists of the country works in Grazute regional park. This is not only an extra motivation for the volunteers but also an invaluable opportunity to acquire priceless technical skills and knowledge. Volunteers would be especially useful in marking (ringing) fledglings on the island, cleaning nesting-boxes, installing artificial nests, and carrying our other simple tasks.

The directorate of Grazute regional park is giving particular attention to environmental (ecological) and non formal education. Two ex-pedagogues work in the park; therefore the volunteers will also be able to gain experience working with children. The volunteers will assist during the "green" lessons in the nature and in the park visitors' centre. They will collect information; prepare educational activities for children of different ages, even implement them with the supervision of a specialist. We also hope that the volunteers will be full of creative energy in designing educational programmes for the blind, the deaf and visitors of other disabilities. The volunteers will also be asked to help organize hikes and camps for the children.

A unique sea museum in open in the park visitors' centre. This is a personal collection of sea shells, sea creatures, fossils and sea-themed souvenirs of the most famous person in the area, teacher V.Zilinskiene (aged 82). The collection consists of more than 3 thousand items. The volunteers will be trusted quite a delicate and responsible task of assisting the collection owner in describing and managing the exposition.

The park visitors' centre hosts exhibitions of various artists too. The volunteers will assist in installing them (3-4 photo, painting, and etc exhibitions per year).
The volunteers will also assist the park's specialists during landscape monitoring: photographing and marking landscape changes, pieces of cultural and environmental heritage, counting numbers of tourists taking cognitive paths, archiving the pictures. The collected material can later be used for photo presentations in the visitors' centre.

During the time of their service the volunteers will be asked to prepare material for a leaflet/small publication and the internet website about the park in their language. It would be a great contribution to the park's publicity.

Grazute regional park is one of the most beautiful regional parks in Lithuania having the biggest number of lakes; a lot of tourists spend their holidays here. As a rule, tourists are followed by garbage. Therefore the volunteers will be asked to participate in joint cleaning actions together with the park's staff collecting garbage near the lakes, paths and trails (usually 1-2 times per month).

One more physical but very useful task is the so called nature management. In spring and in the end of summer the park's specialists together with pupils from the local school take care of the rare plants' habitats, cut shrubs and trees from swamps, mow prairie meadows, remove shrubs form lake islands to restore biological diversity. It is a good chance for the volunteers to move, to become physically stronger at the same time discovering the EU Natura 2000 ecological network spots, and learning about nature processes in Grazute.

PROFILE OF VOLUNTEERS

We would like to host volunteers who would:

- Be passionate to explore the nature, the Lithuanian culture, and lifestyle of a small provincial village.
- Have at least basic knowledge of English/Russian.
- Be patient and motivated for creative work with local children and youth.
- Like hiking, travelling and active life style.
- Be ready for physical work
- Be able to work independently, and plan own activities

The directorate of Grazute regional park is open for all young volunteers who are motivated to work, are flexible, communicable, able to adapt to various situations. The volunteer should be aware that he/she will live in a very small village, where few people speak English, and which is far from bigger cities.
All applicants will be considered and evaluated based on how well they suit the general profile of an EVS volunteer and the requirements of the host placement in particular. Primary selection process will be conducted by the sending organization, later by the host organization together with the coordinating organization.
Grazute regional park is open to work with every organization having the status to send EVS.

If you would like to participate in the candidate selection, please do the following:

1. Fill in the candidate application form (we can send it to you by email) or CV and motivation letter
2. If you are interested in more than one hosting place, please arrange your choices by order of preference
3. Please provide us with EI reference number of your sending organization

Candidate selection will be carried out by the host organizations. The results should be clear in the middle of January. The final answer from the national agency should be given by the 15th of March.