Project environment: profile of the organisation and local community

Most of A.R.T. Fusion's projects are in Bucharest (the capital of Romania, with 3 millions inhabitants at the present time).
Also, there can be different collaborations with other organisations, involving festivals or events that need temporary placement of the volunteer team in other cities.
Related to the type of the project (some can include activities in the rural communities or with small town minorities etc), there can be constant travelling to these communities for implementing the projects activities, but the volunteers will have a permanent residence in Bucharest.
Being the biggest city in Romania, Bucharest offers its inhabitants all sorts of socio-cultural activities and events that one needs for personal development and maintaining an updated contact with the world. Also, Bucharest is the most developed city in Romania. The city grows so much because of a great number of Romanian inhabitants from other cities, minorities and immigrants that migrated here. Bucharest is a complex and diverse environment that mixes together, in a particular manner, the new and the old (form architecture to mentalities) and trough all these aspects if offers a big cultural challenge to any new comer.


Proposed activities for EVS volunteers


- The projects of our association include various activities such as social theatre (forum theatre, invisible theatre, street theatre), street animation (clowning, joggling, poi-poi, balloon making, flash-mobs), music, dance, photography, video spots, films, trainings on different topics, fund razing events, international projects (youth exchanges, seminars, trainings), blogging-internet, gaming etc. Our volunteers are directly involved in all of the parts of a project from conceiving to implementing it, from promoting it to evaluation and feedback.
- More specifically, in the theatre projects the volunteer can be an actor, the director, the joker or the organiser of the event; he can be the person responsible for the communication or for the evaluation and making the final report on the event; he can be the photographer or the P.R. assistant and so on. In the case of street events there can be added to the general line of activities and responsibilities, those that involve a direct interaction with the public (clowning, miming, acting, balloon modulator, dancer etc). For the training projects, the volunteer can be the main trainer or a co-trainer, the organiser or the adiministrative responsible person. For the international projects, the volunteer can be the assistant of the dept. coordinator, can select the participants, can inform and prepare them for the projects, can communicate permanently with them, can evaluate their level of involvement in the projects and can realise summaries of the projects in some cases. The volunteer can also participate as an A.R.T. Fusion representative in international projects linked to the project that he is nationally involved in. For the IT part of the projects, the volunteer can create video games or any other type of virtual products with a social theme, which are related to the projects or the mission of our association. He/she can update and develop the association's site and the other sites that we are administrating; he/she can create blog articles and entries, or translate information about the organisation and the projects in other languages. The volunteer can help promoting the results and other products he has created, he can motivate the other volunteers to contribute to the updating of the blog and the sites. As for the projects that we are implementing as coordinators or as partners, a volunteer can choose to take a large range of rolls, form the creation of the concept of an event to the coordination and organisation of the activities related to that event.
- Each volunteer can get involved in different stages of a project and assume different levels of responsibility, from the coordination or organisation of a project to the implementation of it as a whole, or just in different aspects, like realising specific actions or activities etc


In A.R.T. Fusion, each volunteer has an "open space" concerning the projects he would like to get involved in, the role he needs to take and the degree of involvement attributed to that action. A volunteer can get involved in projects that are already on roll, but he can just as easily create a new one, for witch he will receive the full support of the other members of the NGO. This way he can express the potential he wants to activate during his stay and he can integrate the achievements in helping our mission

Volunteers profiles and recruitement process

There are no predetermined criteria for an A.R.T. Fusion volunteer, or for an EVS volunteer in A.R.T. Fusion for that matter; the first thing that he/she should do is to believe and respect the mission and the values of our organisation; she should be a person willing to work in a soliciting and provocative environment with a stress potential over average, and she should be drowned to the work methods that we propose, as specially social theatre. We believe that all the backgrounds of our volunteers consist into learning material for us, as an organisation. This is also valid for the background of the Sending Organisation, as no matter its mission, if the sending volunteer can be consistent with our values and mission, the interaction will help us grow as Romanians and as an NGO.
The projects that we want EVS volunteers for, will be made public on all possible channels of communication (specialised discussion groups, dedicated sites etc), and all the applicants will be informed about their evolution in the selection process. If there'll be more applications then the number of places available at that moment, we'll accentuate the individual communication with each possible volunteer, in order to investigate more his motivation. Those who will have a stronger, more compatible motivation with our goals and objectives will be selected.
Once the EVS volunteers are selected, the project can be adjusted together with them in order to better respond to their needs, if there will be such a request.
We are also open to the idea of creating new projects with the potential volunteers.
An NGO that functions in the same thematically and methodological area as A.R.T. Fusion is more then welcome to join us in an experience exchange that will eventually benefit both of our NGO's. However, this is not a selection criteria, the main priority remaining the volunteer, his motivation and his interests.




Special needs (if applicable):
If your placements are open to hosting volunteers with fewer opportunities, please provide information about the competence, experience and infrastructure and (human or other) resources available in your organisation to accommodate and support them.

In A.R.T. Fusion, the staff and also some of our volunteers have majors in psychology, sociology, crises management, differences management, conflict management and problem solving, so all of the delicate situations that have raised until this moment have been handled with precaution and care. In consequence, with the EVS volunteers there will be a permanent communication, so that the specialised people in our NGO and all of the other people that have connection with the matter, can be aware at all time of the EVS volunteers needs and desires. We will try our best to fulfil all of those requests that are in our area of expertise.


Risk prevention, protection and safety:

Each volunteer will receive an information kit before arriving in Romania, that will include information about:
- our country, different cultural aspects seen from the historical point of view but with accent on the contemporary dynamic;
- economical aspects of Bucharest;
- social and cultural aspects of Bucharest;
- some of the legal aspects that he/she is more probably to encounter in Bucharest / Romania's day to day life (shall be discussed with the EVS volunteer on his arrival);
- administrative and logistic aspects linked to the place he'll be living in, house rules and so on; accommodation and cohabitants information;
- an introduction in the association's life and history of it's members; cultural organisation aspects;
- a proposal for working hours (shall be discussed with the volunteer on his arrival);
- the associations rules and principles of behaviour (shall be discussed with the volunteer on his arrival);
- rules for accident prevention, emergencies and so on (shall be discussed with the volunteer on his arrival);
For each EVS volunteer there will be assigned a mentor, a person directly responsible for the communication with him trough out his hole stay in A.R.T. Fusion.
Also, in order to prevent bad encounters, there shall be assigned another person that the volunteer can talk to if he's not satisfied with the relationship he has with his mentor, if he has some problems that he thinks he can't discuss with his mentor or if any conflicts should arise.
From the very first meeting the organisation rules will be discussed and made clear. Also, all the information concerning the accommodations will be given to the volunteer together with the guiding lines for risk prevention and safety at the work place, related to the project that he'll be working on and the NGO in general. We will make sure that these rules are so understood by the volunteer. Together with him, we will work on a system of sanctions that will be applied in case of misdemeanour (this can cover a range of punishments from temporary redraw of the right to activate in the project to the final exclusion from the project). The volunteer will have the possibility to negotiate these rules before the beginning of his involvement in the NGO, even change the ones that he doesn't agree with, if all the NGO staff approves these changes. After this process, when he agrees with the final rules, he'll sign the papers containing these rules and assume the responsibility of applying them. Only then he can start his volunteer service in A.R.T. Fusion.
The volunteer will be requested to express his possible problems with the accommodations, food, language courses or pocket money that will be assured for him. These problems will be evaluated in relation with the volunteer's expectations, keeping in mind that before the beginning of the project he has received all the information about the real possibilities offered by the EVS programme and he has had a chance to discuss them with people from our organisation and the sending organisation. In this way, we hope to eliminate all the possibilities for non-realistic interpretations of the situation, of A.R.T. Fusion or the opportunities of the EVS programme.
There will be weekly meetings with the project team and the coordinators in order to discuss the project's evolution and the possible changes or the problems that might appear, to give and get feed-back to and from the team and the coordinators and to obtain suggestions for the future actions.
From a medical point of view, there must be a very clear communication between our organisation and the sending organisation, concerning the medical history of the EVS volunteer. We require maximum transparency from the volunteer and the SO concerning this topic. If such problems should appear because of the lack of communication or misinformation from the volunteer or the SO and if these problems are not in the solving range of our NGO, A.R.T. Fusion reserves the right to exclude the EVS volunteer from the programme.
We'll also establish together with the EVS volunteer an emergency fond (that he'll contribute to with some of the pocket money and that A.R.T. Fusion will also sustain with the association money), that is to be used for the volunteer in such cases as theft, unforeseen travelling etc. The money left unused from this emergency fond will be returned to the volunteer at the end of the project. All the expenses covered by this fond will be transparent to the volunteer and all other control instances.
If there shall be the case for minor EVS volunteers, we must add that the accommodations for them will be always with people over 18 (legally major in Romania).

http://ec.europa.eu/youth/evs/aod/hei_form_en.cfm?EID=62000157201