Dopo di Noi is located in Biella (Piemonte, North of Italy), it is the capital of the province of Biella, with 45,500 inhabitants. It is located about 70 Km northeast of Turin and about 100 Km northwest of Milan. In Biella there are university courses and several facilities and tourist attractions. Biella's surroundings are very beautiful, there are many woods and hills that stands at the beginning of Alps. In every moment, if you like it, you can go for a walk in nature. At the same time, heading toward south, you can find flat lands with lakes, fields and paddy fields. Religious pilgrims make their way to the Sanctuary of Oropa that in 2003, was inserted by UNESCO in the World Heritage List. Biella is an important wool processing and textile center too. There is a small airport in the nearby comune of Cerrione. In Biella you can find also many relevant international contemporary art activities such as the Pistoletto foundation, Cracking - art movement.
Dopo di Noi organisation, as we wrote will be the main place where volunteers will have activities, it is located 1 km far from the citycenter. It is really well linked with the city center. Our activities as we already described are in another structure, "La Casa", in Pettinengo. EVS volunteers that will take part to this project will always go there to have some activities with a volunteer or with one of our operator, with public transports or with our transports.
To have activities in our organisation means share all the daily actions with our users, as for example meals, the cleaning up, all the free moments. We think that it is important to underlaine that we consider as really important always to be respectful (with other persons) and open minded. We ask to EVS volunteers to believe in sharing experiences and moments. We ask to EVS volunteers to share meals but also to help our users to eat in a polite and indipendent way, they will have to be as an example.
We also ask, relating to the community life, is a particulare attention to the waste: we absolutely don't want to waste food, water, energy, and we would like from EVS volunteers, during our activities not to drink too much alcoolic drinks, always to be as an example.
In general, our community life has some rules based on the importance of the direct transmission of competences. EVS will have, as all of us, a direct educational role with our guest.

EVS volunteers will be inserted in Dopo di Noi's activities and workshops.
He will have the opportunity to grow-up his competences and to acquire a work methodology in this field that he will be able to use also in other fields. He will have the opportunity tho support some professional workers in our laboratories, he will enter in touch with disability and he will understand that it is a part of the real world. He will learn to look at the disabled person's integration in our society as a possible engagement and feasible and not as an utopia.
Evs volunteers will have many different roles in our EVS, and they will also have many different learning opportunities. We want to underline it ragarding to the "walk toward autonomy" that we purpose to our EVS volunteers.
The first step that we consider, and the first one toward autonomy, is to allow our user to be counsciousness of themselves, they have to perceive themselves as persons, with limits and abilities. To reach this goal we use theater workshops, manual ability as plasticine, painting,… EVS volunteers will help Dopo di noi in planning those workshops and in manage it. He will also help the young disabled persons in those workshops giving them the possibility to relate with them and to get-to-know them.
The young disabled person will have necessary to relate himself with the adult world. Both because he will be adult and both because he will have necessary to relate with them, he will have to be able to interact with them. With this purposal, Dopo di Noi organize meetings between users and psycologists, both for the youngsters than for his parents. EVS volunteers in this situation will help us to have some feedback more relating to the survey of their needs. It will happened of course when he will be integrated in the new reality and he will have meet our guys.
After this, our users will have to learn to provide their personal hygiene, their look. Dopo di Noi organize some training courses to help them in understand it, and to help them in learning how to do it. They have to learn how to daily manage themselves.
In the same time, while their consciousness is growing up we offer to our guys to concretely experiment themselves far from their family context, with autonomy. Dopo di Noi organizes short community life experiences for its users, to help them in a gradual change, to help them in becoming not dipendent from their families. Dopo di Noi also orgniazes workshops with the aim to menage their daily activities, and become more responsible: travel-workshops where groups of youngsters organize and take part together in a short trip, maybe of 2-3 days. Evs volunteers will support in this activity and he will feel a part of it, of this project and of Dopo di Noi. He will take part in a "walk", he will learn to manage a personal project and to follow it in all its phases.
After that, Dopo di Noi suggest to its guests to develop a personal life project. In this step our users are helped by some professionists as psychologist, educators… and not only by our volunteers. EVS volunteers will enter into play to help our guys to carry oput their own life project, EVS volunteers will support youngsters to put it into practice.
The following step is connected to the indipendence of our young disabled persons. To reach this condition, it is important that our guest will be able to work and that he will have an autonomous job. Our task is not job, of course, but the social inclusion that to have a job means. Social inclusion is absolutely more important than the occupational one, in our opinion. Social inclusion means to be able to live with other persons, maybe in a community house, and to feel indipendent by family.To be indipendent and to live alone (or with other persons) means the higher level of non-dipendence by family. EVS volunteers will be involved in this step helping our guests and supporting them. EVS volunteers will learn the difference that there is between social and working inclusion.
We tried to describe wich kind of activities EVS volunteers will have in our organisation, it is what our organisation is going to suggest them to do. We hope that reading this description EVS volunteer will be able to understand also which is our idea of disability, which kind of approach we have. EVS volunteers will learn, above all, not to relate with disable people as to somebody that need a dependance to anybody else to live but they will consider disabled persons as people that have the possibility to became autonomous.
EVS volunteers will have the opportunity to enter in contact and became friend of young disabled persons, maybe also helping in the "free time" workshop. In this situation EVS volunteers and our guests will spent their time together. Our EVS will take care to the free time of our guests.If our EVS volunteer will have some special abilities we will "use" them with our guys, we will probably organize some ad hoc activities, to allow him to express himself in his personal skills. He will organize workshops, activities always with some of our voluteers or professionists.
Activities and worshops described are periodically changing. In those workshop we can list the clay-lab, kooking-lab, theater and dance, personal hygiene, free time workshop, re-elaboration activity. We also have some activities relating to some short community life to the sea or somewhere for a week end.
We always have the same tasks but we usually change our activities, to offer not always the same activity to our guests.
Our final idea is to insert our users in the social and local community. In the end of our "walk", they'll have a recognized social role. Dopo di Noi suggest a journey through autonomy, growth, indipendence. Social inclusion is our task. Social inclusion is more important, in our opinion than the economical one.
A typical week could be like this:
MONDAY: In the morning, Backoffice and planning . In the afternoon, clay-lab.
TUESDAY: In the morning, Backoffice and planning. In the afternoon, musical workshop.
WEDNESDAY: In the afternoon, logical workshops or logical games. In the evening, free-time workshop.
THURSDAY: In the morning, Backoffice and planning. In the afternoon, social inclusion workshop.
FRIDAY: In the morning, personal hygiene laboratory. In the afternoon, gardening activities.
SATURDAY & SUNDAY: free time; in case some activities take place during the weekend, the volunteers have their free time during the week.

Every week, according with the volunteer, there will be Italian lessons and a meeting with the tutor to plan the following week activities and to evaluate the EVS current activities.
In all these activities, EVS volunteers will be involved from the preparatory phase through the realization and evaluation of each activity.
The volunteers will often use computers, email and internet. They will always have the possibility to express their own opinion about the project.

Our project is opened to all the interested youngsters, we don't ask them to have some special abilities or knowledges. We believe that, above all, it is important that our EVS volunteers will be strongly motivated, interested in the project and able to fit in those kind of situations. EVS volunteers will directly enter in contact with the disability world. They will work in complexes context, in touch with people that need all their attention and all their engagement. EVS volunteers will have to put themselves into play. We will be happy to host EVS volunteers with many new ideas to allow the integration of disabled persons in our society. We will confront and discuss with them about it.
Our activities are usually planned with volunteers and profesionists, we think that EVS volunteers will have to believe in groupwork. EVS volunteers will have to agree with our way to work with disability and with our ideas of it. We want to underline it because our method is strongly connected with our ideas.
We will be happy to host youngsters with new ideas, to insert in our activities new good practicies and new elements. We will consider all new ideas and all new point of view that EVS volunteers will suggest. We strongly believe in the sharing of good practices and we're ready to host new purposal and initiative.
The Dopo di Noi president is a Catholic priest, but our organisation is non-religious, non-political and all the values, religious believing and ideas of EVS volunteers won't interfere with our selection.
If the sending organisation that will send volunteers to us will be an organisation that works in the disability field too, we are open to work in new projects and to estabilish a new and good partnership. Maybe we should cope always with the YiA program, with youth exchanges, other EVS… We are also open for new partnerships if the sending organisation won't be directly involved in disability but if it will be interested in new cooperations and in new partnerships around other projects.

We are conscious of the engagment that an EVS project needs, we also confront us with other EVS hosting organisation.  We think that relating to our organisations, our activities and moreover relating to our staff (both volunteers and workers) we are able to host 2 volunteers in the same time ensuring an high quality level in the learning process, in the all project and an high welfare level for volunteers.

We're not going to host youngsters with special needs.