A.
Dresden is a big city with about 512.000 inhabitants. Through the city flows the river Elbe.Our kindergarten was founded 30 years ago and was recently renovated and redecorated. A wide playground surrounds the kindergarten building.
14 kindergarten teachers and different therapists, supported by trainees and national volunteers, care for 117 children.
Our children are divided into 9 different groups:
1 group for small children at the age of 1 up to 3 years
4 groups for children at the age of 3 up to 7 years
2 groups for disabled children at the age of 2 up to 7 years
2 groups for older children (class 1 to class 6 - after-school care centre)
Our kindergarten is located in a quiet and green residential area, close to different places of interest (wide parks, World Heritage Site - riverside of the river Elbe, and so on). Often we visit this places with our children to enrich their natural and cultural understanding and to broaden their senses. The bus and tram station is very close to our kindergarten so it is very easy to go to the beautiful centre of Dresden by public transport. Our kindergarten attaches great importance to the inclusion of slight disabled children, the support of the individual strength of our children and a tolerant and peaceful interaction.
Our basic principle is: "It is normal to be different"
Beside the inclusion of our slightly disabled children, our main focus is the daily speech therapy of the children with a difficult social background or an immigration background. Our kindergarten teachers, speech therapists and also our parents develop together a regularly changing speech training, which is oriented on the needs of the children. Once a week our children can take part in an English workshop. We hope that the European volunteer will offer an own workshop, e.g. about his/her country or language.
Our responsible (JugendSozialwerk Nordhausen e.V.) hosts and sends volunteers for a few years and has always gained good experiences with the European Voluntary Service. This motivates us to host volunteers in our kindergarten in Dresden too. We hope that this will enrich the work in our kindergarten.

B.
Motivation:
As a large organisation with about 800 employees and different establishments open to voluntary service, we would like to offer interested people from the whole of Europe, the chance to be part of our work. The diverse volunteer work in our establishments constantly offers possibilities and opportunities for further training and to learn new things, e.g. in the social, cultural and specialist areas. As an organisation we would also like to profit from the co-operation with the volunteers. Our clients even more should enjoy the advantages. The work should be based on mutual giving and taking.

Working and learning opportunities:
The young volunteers will be integrated in all daily activities regarding to their interests and their potentialities. All of our staff members are open minded, so it will be easy for the volunteers to feel comfortable in the team. At the beginning the volunteers will work close together with the staff members to get to know the different areas of the kindergarten. Later, the volunteers will work more and more independently. During the work with the children the volunteers will get an interesting insight into the social and cultural life of our children. Furthermore the volunteers will learn how to deal with the different problems of our children, e.g. their difficult social background or their personal deficits. Therefore the volunteers need to display sensitivity, patience, insistence and consistency.
During the work with our children, the volunteers will enable their personal strength, their musical sense, creativity, phantasy and their rhetorical, acting and athletic skills. Furthermore we believe, that the cooperative and collaborative teamwork with the kindergarten teachers, therapists, children, parents, doctors and the other national volunteers will help the European volunteers to develop their own skills and also their linguistically abilities.The volunteers have to work 35h a week including the language course.

Fields of activity:
Regarding to our special daily routine and our concept we will offer a great variety of activities to our volunteers. They can take part in all daily activities, regarding to their interests. Furthermore they can also realize their own ideas e.g. to create new activities for the children. The volunteers will be integrated in the preparation of the different highlights of the year or accompany the children during their excursions and observations of the nature.
The volunteers can help the children working on the computer or support our staff members by composing information for the parents or working on public relations.
We will encourage the volunteers to create an own workshop for the children.
We expect from our staff members and also from our volunteers, that they will support the children in every acceptable tasks (e.g. change nappies, help the children using the toilet,…).

A possible time-table:
08.00 o'clock : start of the working day
08.30 - 09.30 o'clock : "Good-Morning" games
supporting the children
09.30 - 10.00 o'clock : realisation of the own project (e.g. German - English workshop)
10.00 - 11.15 o'clock : going for a walk or to the playground
11.15 - 12.15 o'clock : supporting the children while lunch
12.15 - 14.00 o'clock : free time for the volunteer and time to prepare the own projects
14.00 - 14.30 o'clock : supporting the children while they have their tea break
14.30 - 15.30 o'clock : playing with the children or realising an own workshop
16.00 o'clock : end of the working day

C.
The volunteers who we would like to host in our kindergarten should love children as much as we do. They should be patient, open minded, creative, motivated and should have the ability to respond to the children. They should have the will to work with slightly disableded children and help them to include into the group.
Sense of responsibility and teamwork are as important as the willingness to learn the German language or to extend the existing language skills.
We would be especially happy to host young men.
We are open to work with any kind of sending organisation.


D -
E.
The working conditions in our project are related to the needs of our children. We will make sure that our volunteers will never be alone with a whole kindergarten group. During the own workshops of the volunteers a kindergarten teacher will support them or the group will be divided.
The volunteers will live in a residential home (which belongs to our centre for children with speech impediments). They will have their own room with bathroom and they will share the kitchen with the children and pedagogues (only during the week). In the residential home exist all necessary furniture and electrical equipments. We will provide bed clothes. The volunteers have to clean their rooms by themselves.
We don't plan to host underage volunteers.
We already gained a lot of experiences in sending and hosting volunteers and beside this we continuously read all publications from our National Agency. So we are aware of a lot of problems that might occur and we are well prepared to solve them.

1. Home Sickness
We always involve our current international and national volunteers in the pre-departure arrangements for the new volunteers, e.g. we give them the e-mail addresses of the new volunteers, so that they can get in contact with them before their arrival. We believe that this pre-departure contact helps our new volunteers to feel more comfortable with the unknown situation and also prevents fears and prejudices.
We have special rituals on the arrival day of a new volunteer, e.g. the tutor from the hosting project and one or two national volunteers pick him/her up from the train station. Before this they have decorated the room of the new volunteer with "WELCOME"- posters and other small things and prepared a small dinner-party for them.
During the first week the staff members of the hosting project or the national volunteers ´guide` the new ones. They go together to all necessary authorities, make a trip through the city and so on.
We use every contact with the hosting project to ask about our new volunteers to intervene if necessary.

2. Loneliness
Dresden is a very historical city with international flair, a lot of places of interests, small coffeehouses and nice pubs. Most of the staff members and also most of the national volunteers live in Dresden, they will invite and accompany the new volunteers to activities and cultural events.
We support our volunteers ín buying them a special card for trains, which offers a discount on the tickets. This helps them to stay in personal contact with their new friends, even with them from the seminars organised by the National Agency.

3. Language Training
All our volunteers take part in a weekly language training (German as a foreign language) in Dresden. There are different courses regarding to the level of knowledge of the volunteers, so everyone can take part in the course which fits him/her best. The language trainings are offered during the whole voluntary service.

4. Underchallenged / Overworked
The target group of the hosting project is very grateful: curious, open minded children. If the volunteers love children, they will enjoy the work in this project and they should not feel overworked.
During the first three month of the voluntary service the volunteers will get an insight into the daily routine of the kindergarten. After this first three-month period, the volunteers should be able to offer small workshops regarding to their own interests and skills to the children. Therefore we talk to them about their ideas and wishes but also about their fears and expectations. Furthermore we assist our volunteers with developing a schedule and realising the workshop. Regularly the tutor of the hosting project carries out meetings with the volunteers to avoid an underchallenging.

5. Mismatching
Every young person knows the structure of a kindergarten from his/her own experience, so the expectations of the volunteers can't be that wrong. We know that it will take some time to handle small children and children with speech impediments or slight disabilities and that this could be a risk. But we will advise some books to the volunteers before they will start their voluntary service and the staff members will introduce them very carefully during the first weeks.
After the first volunteers have finished their voluntary year, we will ask them to write a report about their experiences. Later we will send this reports to our prospective volunteers, so that they can get an insight into the daily routine of the kindergarten and their future tasks.

6. Mentoring
We have a tutor in every hosting project (trained by our German National Agency).
The advantage of the kindergarten is, that there is only a small team of staff members, so the tutor will be able to have daily contacts with the volunteers.
The staff members working in the administration of the JugendSozialwerk Nordhausen e.V. will use every opportunity to get in personal contact with the volunteers. Furthermore they are responsible for keeping the contact with the sending organisation, controlling the compliance made in the project description and in the Activity Agreement and organising joint activities between the volunteers from the different hosting projects of the JugendSozialwerk Nordhausen e.V.
We know that volunteers often keep their problems for themselves, e.g. to solve them alone or not to bother their tutor. In this special situation it can be difficult to find a constructive solution, because very often the volunteers have already made their decision to leave the project. To avoid this we carry out regular meetings between the volunteer, the contact person from the administration, the leader of the hosting project and the tutor of the volunteer.
The first meeting takes place before the arrival of the volunteer (certainly without the volunteer), here we discuss the "arrival ceremony" and the settling-in period.
Later the meetings will be quarterly to reflect the past three month and to discuss e.g. the own workshops of the volunteers. Approximately six weeks before the end of the voluntary service we carry out a meeting to evaluate the project, to prepare the reports for the National Agency, to prepare the YouthPass or to discuss about possible future projects of the volunteer.
In spite of all our precautions we know that it could happen that one of our volunteers would like to leave the project. We always convey them that this is uncomplicated and has no personal consequences for them. But we attach great importance to exhaust all possibilities to redress the causes for the wish to leave (discussing the problem with the volunteer, the hosting project, the sending project or with all together).
If the volunteer still wants to leave the project we carry out an evaluation to reflect together with the volunteer which useful skills and experiences he/she gained during the voluntary service (despite the fact of leaving)