The project
Sindhuset is an activity house for psychiatric patients /psychologically vulnerable, psychiatric patients who are alcoholics or abusers of medicine, and others who need a place to meet and to be with other people.
In the activity house we have many different types of visitors. Generally speaking there are 50% with a psychiatric diagnosis, 30% are abusers of alcohol, hashis or medicine and 20% are lonely people - many of them suffering from a depression. Many of the visitors will suffer from a combination of these problems. The age ranges from 20 to 75 years old, but most are between 35-55 years old - there are both men and women, few of them have another ethnic background than the Danish. An average week we have 60-70 different people who visit us - in all we will have 90 visitors in total. Some visits us on regular basis several times a week, others come quite seldom.

In Sindhuset the visitors can come without the interference of the authorities and they can be anonymous. They can come right in from the street if they feel lonely and want to be together with other people, or to join our activities. The number of visitors is increasing - this is mainly bacause we have time to talk to each one of them and that many like to join the activity groups since they are organised in small groups with a teacher.
We want to stress that we do no specific therapeutical work or treatment with them. Keywords are presence and being together.
Sindhuset is situated in a small house with our own garden in walking distance (15 minutes) from the center of the town/the trainstation. We have two living rooms where we organize activities and just spend time together, a small kitchen, an office for the staff and a computer room in the basement. We have a nice garden with a terrace which we enjoy using during summertime.

Activities
Sindhuset is open 60 hours a week, spread out on 6 days from Monday to Saturday. closed on Sundays. We open at 9 am, 3 days a week we close at 4 pm - the remaining 3 days till 10pm.
The activities we organise can vary, but typically it is: cooking, working in the garden, sewing, relaxation, swimming, bingo, walks, making flower arrangements, computers and using the internet. We often go on excursions: going to the beach, visit a tourist site nd other places of interest, going to a restaurant in the evening. One week a year we offer them to join us on holidays in other countries. Visitors can join the activities, but often they just come to drink a cup of coffee and talk with the staff and the other visitors. We prepare and eat lunch and dinner together.

The purpose of Sindhuset.
To support the visitor to use local possibilities in the community.
to create an atmosphere of confidence and presence.
To offer the visitor time to be heard, met and understood.
To show the visitor their possibilities of joining the activities on the basis of equality
to strenghten the visitors self esteem
Sindhuset is a nongovermental organisation and is part of the national organisation Sind. Expressed with the words of Sind, we aim at higher tolerance and understanding in our society for mentally ill and their relatives. We take and support initiatives in advantage of mentally ill and their well-being, prevention and cure. We are supported financially by the authorities, but also depend on private fundings.

Staff
In Sindhuset we have a daily leader employed fulltime and besiders we have 4 part time staffmembers employed on special conditions. But very important to the atmosphere in the house is that most of the staff are Danish volunteers giving their time and energy to the place, simply because they like being here. Presently we have 10 Danish volunteers of different ages. We are very used to have trainees from educational institutions and volunteers joining us, and as such experienced in giving support, provide knowledge and supervision to volunterers and newcomers.

Location, board and lodging.
Skive is a town with 21000 inhabitants. Important workplaces are the many furniture factories in the area and a large military base. Besides there are several educational institutions. There are a variety of activity possibilities within cultural and creative field,and especially many sport facilities. We have a combined theater- and concert house, 2 cinemas, museums a harbour for yaths - and the town is surrounded by very beautiful nature - forests and beaches. Skive is connected to the rest of the country by bus and train.

The volunteer will live in a hostfamily. The hostfamily does not receive payment but opens its home to the volunteer based on an interest in intercultural understanding. The life in a host family will faciliate the integration in the local community and will accelerate the process of both language and intercultural learning.
Youngsters living with their families in Denmark traditionally enjoy a lot of freedom, but of course the volunteer must integrate into family life and respect their rules and way of living. We will look for a family taking the volunteer's wishes and needs in consideration. The host family might not live in Skive but in the countryside or in smaller villages close to Skive. While at work the volunteer will eat together with the others in Sindhuset.

The volunteer will attend on-arrival training by the national agency as well as nationally organised mid-term meetings. Furthermore s/he will be invited to all social events organised by Dansk ICYE for exchange students and host families. Be aware that there are no other volunteers at the project and probably not in the same town either. Contact to other EVS volunteers will be during visits in the weekends.

Therefore main contact and friends should be made with young Danes - and you will be the one having to take the initiative. They will not come easily and invite you in, you are the one who has to open the door to friendships.

Dansk ICYE will apoint a contact person to the volunteer (a co-worker of Dansk ICYE). S/he will be of assistance in case of questions or problems concerning the daily life in the project, host family or spare time. It wil be arranged min. 2 meetings between Dansk ICYE, Sindhuset and the volunteer to make sure that the aims and ideas of both volunteer and project are reached.

The volunteer will join a public languageschool and most likely attend evening classes twice a week for the first three months. We expect the volunteers to make a great effort to learn Danish as this is the way to be integrated in the workingproject and society.

http://ec.europa.eu/youth/evs/aod/hei_form_en.cfm?EID=10000148301