Project environment - Local community

Kalmar is one of the oldest cities in the country and is situated on the Swedish south east coast with approximately 65 000 inhabitants. In Kalmar, history is waiting around each corner; you will find traces of every different historical period. You can take a walk down the cobbled streets in the Old Town and finish with a visit to Kalmar Castle, which has a history dating back 800 years or you can look at the modern are at the newly build are museum.
The citizens of Kalmar see culture as an important contributor to the city. Active associations contribute to the diversity of cultural life. The many art galleries, museums, theatres and churches are just some examples of what Kalmar can offer. In Kalmar, where ever you go, nature is close at hand. The old city park was originally planned at the end of 19th century and is right by the castle and the new build art museum. If you want to enjoy the countryside, take a trip to Stensö or Värsnäs, two of Kalmar's most popular recreational areas. Not far from the town there is also the 4H-farm with the animals and well preserved main buildings creating the atmosphere of a country farm.
The University of Kalmar has with its 8 000 student's fields such as marine officer training courses, neural sciences, automation, environment, media and tourism. All of the University faculties are in the city centre.
Kalmar is located between the island of Öland and the "Kingdom of Glass". Öland, which is Sweden's second largest island, is one of the most popular vacation resorts in the country. The island is famous for its long beaches and wild and beautiful nature. The region attracts more than 2,5 million tourists each year.
From Kalmar Airport you can reach Stockholm daily and with the high speed train X2000, you will have direct services to Copenhagen, Stockholm and Gothenburg (approx 4 hours).
The project is not located in a live-in community. The volunteers will stay in apartments in the city together with other volunteers.

Service and learning opportunities
We believe that a volunteer at our project are going to have a lot of learning opportunities in our table tennis club
As a volunteer in this project, you are going to have the opportunity to develop you own leadership skills and in this way strengthen oneself to develop his or her own initiative within the project. In this project, we are going to try to connect three different work areas, the health area together with table tennis and also information spreading about EVS and how it is to be a volunteer. We also hope that the volunteer are going to learn more about how important the physical work is for the body and for the development of the children and the youth. The volunteer are going to have the opportunity to meet a lot of youth and this will give the volunteer an opportunity of getting to know how the life can be in Sweden. We believe that the overall activities, cooperating with leaders that are more experienced, teachers, trainers, coaches and other experts is very conducive to developing leadership skills
We also hope that the volunteer are going to grow as an individual and learn more on how it is to cooperate with other people and how to develop there own ideas. We want the volunteer to come up with new ideas on how to get the children more active.
Our volunteers will also have the opportunity for close on-going training and personal support of the head coach, the assistant coaches, the manager of our ladies´ team, formerly volunteers, the project leader. Especially the assistance of the formerly volunteers can be most valuable for our new candidates

Role of the EVS volunteers
The volunteer are going to have a very central role in the project. We believe that it is important for the children and youth to get the opportunity to meet new cultures and new people. The volunteer are going to give support to all the youth at the table tennis club and at the same time help us come up with new ideas on how to develop the trainings and the different activities that are done. The volunteer are also going to have a big opportunity to develop his or her own project within the different work areas. The volunteer are also going to be able to attend competitions and organize our own tournaments in Kalmar.

Our strategy with the health project is to help bring in sport activities after school-time/ and during breaks, to promote table tennis, and an active life as a way of improving the health of the children. The youth will not only get better co-ordination and stronger bodies but also at the same time learn more about foreign countries, cultures and languages in the meeting with the volunteers and in the end be more open-minded and hopefully this will reduce the use of drugs and to stop racism. The volunteer are going to be a support in preparing the different activities, for example set up the table tennis, act as trainers or organize other physical activities. The volunteer are not going to replace or act as substitute during the trainings or break activities. The volunteer are only going to support during trainings and help develop new strategies and physical activities to get the children to be more active.
In this way, we also hope to wake up the children's curiosity on different countries and the idea of meeting other children through different exchanges.

Activities for the volunteers
The volunteer are going to be able to participating at all levels in our club, with study circles, after-school activities, organize trainings, multi-ball and sparring, setting up tables and helping with running of tournaments. Our club organizes quite regularly different courses in table-tennis for both leaders, coaches, parents and players and our volunteers have good possibilities to develop their leadership skills. At the table-tennis club the volunteer are going to help coaching all the children in there training. The volunteer are going to be able to organize his or her own ideas, it can be new method on how to practise or it can be new study circles that are related to health and physical activities. This is a big part were we want to involve the volunteers and were the volunteer are going to be able to develop new projects and ideas according to the volunteers interest and knowledge. We believe that it is going to be very interesting for the youth from our club to be able to train and meet the volunteers. It is

The volunteer are also going to be able to support the coordinating organization KUMULUS with information spreading and meeting with new volunteers that are interested in going away on other EVS projects. Kumulus has been working active with spreading information and we believe that it is more interesting to talk and meet the real volunteers and get the opportunity to ask questions on how it is to be a volunteer and what to expect.

A work week at his project can look like this
Monday: 2 hour languish training and 4 hour table tennis at the club
Tuesday: meeting with the trainers to plan the work week and upcoming tournaments, training with the youth
Wednesday: 2 hour languish training afternoon activity with children that need special help
Thursday: 4-6 hour table tennis at the club, meetings and study circles.
Friday: Afternoon activities, table tennis or other sport activity.

The volunteer might have to work on weekends but then the volunteer are going to be free another day.
The volunteer is going to get language training at Folkuniversitetet together with the other volunteers from Kalmar

Volunteer profiles and recruitment process
We are looking for 1-2 highly motivated volunteers that are having as big interest in working with children and have an interest in table tennis. You do not have to be able to play table tennis but it will of course make it easy, if you are going to be able to support the children in there, table tennis practise. As a volunteer in this project it is also good if you are interested in an active lifestyle and that you are absolute drug free so that you can be an good example for the children.
As a volunteer, you also need to be flexible because one day does not look like the next day

During the recurrent process we are going to be supported by Kumulus how is the coordinating organization. We are also going to use "evs-works" as a platform for finding volunteers. Kumulus are also going to act as the mentor outside the project for the volunteers. In the project the volunteer are going to be supported by the head coaches

Risk prevention, safety and protection
We do not see any special risks when it comes to the environment were the project is located. Kalmar is a quiet small safe city with only 70 000 inhabitants. The main risk that we see it that a volunteer can feel alone in Kalmar or feel that Kalmar is to small and that there is not much going on. One way of preventing the loneliness is to have more then one volunteer; in this way, they are going to be a support to each other. In Kalmar we have 5 volunteers and they live quit close to each other. The volunteer also has support from Kumulus and if the volunteer want to speak to some one outside the project or Kumulus we have connection with people at the church or at the red cross.
The volunteer are going to have a supervisor at the table tennis club that is going to support the volunteer in the daily work. Out side the project the volunteer are going to receive support from Kumulus and also from the rest of the volunteers that are in the region. The volunteer are also going to participate in the different social activities that are organized by Kumulus.