Project environment
Oskarshamn is located in the south east part of Sweden right by the Baltic Sea. Oskarshamn has about 26 300 inhabitants. In Oskarshamn you are going to fine everything that you need, excellent shopping malls, department stores and small picturesque boutiques and lots of cafés. You will have the opportunity to stroll along the narrow cobbled streets in the old part of the town, Besväret and Fnyket or you can just enjoy the magnificent gardens and the well-preserved wooden houses from the 19th century. In Oskarshamn you are also going to find a public swimming hall, or you can use one of many nice public beaches and swim in the Baltic Sea. When you want to get something to read you can just visit the public library or if you want to travel around you have good train and bus connections to all the big cities in Sweden. Oskarshamn is the city that can offer you much more!

Both our youth centres were the projects are taking place are located in the city centre of Oskarshamn and both youth centre a connected to the intermediate stage school. Stadsparkens youth centre is connected to Valhallaskolan who has around 700 pupil and Kristinebergs youth centre is connected to Kristinebergs school who has around 600 pupils. At Kristinebergs youth centre the youth are a bit younger (10-19 years) then they are at Stadsparkens youth centre (13-19 years).
Both youth centres are driven by voluntariness were the youth can come and go as they want to and the idea of giving the youth a drug free environment were the can have the space to develop new ideas and meet friends. The different activities that you will find at both youth centres is table tennis, billiard, indoor climbing wall, café, computers and much more.

At Stadsparkens youth centre we are trying to build up a music room after the youth have shown big interest in music and especially learning more about scratching. At Stadsparkens we also organise indoor floor-hockey every week and different culture nights and concerts. We also organise trips to Liseberg (amusement park) in Gothenburg and much more.

At Kristinebergs youth centre we are working more with dance, form and artistic work. But we also organise different trips and outdoor activity, we go to the northern part of Sweden and we walk the east coast path and much more.

At both youth centres we also have youth counsels once a month. Here the youth meet the local decision makers to talk about what has to be done to develop the local youth work and the youth places.

The volunteer will get his or her own apartment or share apartment with other volunteers.

Learning opportunities
We believe that a volunteer at our project are going to have a lot of learning opportunities.
As a volunteer in this project, you are going to have the opportunity to develop you own leadership skills, meet new cultures, get new ideas and knowledge and in this way strengthen oneself to develop his or her own initiative within the project.

The volunteer is going to have the opportunity to meet many new young people and this will give the volunteer an opportunity of getting to know how the life is in a medium size town in Sweden. This will also get the volunteer a glimpse of the cultural life of the youth life in Sweden. At the same time we hope that the volunteer is going to show us how it is to come into our organisation with a different background and from a different culture. We know that having a volunteer within the organisation are going to give us new ideas on how to develop our work and it will give us new tools and new knowledge to work with.

We believe that the overall activities, cooperating with youth leaders that are very experienced, teachers and other people is very conducive and developing for the volunteer and for the volunteers ideas and future plans.

We also hope that the volunteer is 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 and develop there own ideas.

Role of the volunteer
The volunteer are going to have a very central role in the project. We believe that it is important for the children and youth at our youth centre to get the opportunity to meet new cultures and new people. The volunteer are going to support the youth in their ideas and at the same time help the staff ate the youth centres to come up with new ideas on how to develop the organisation and the different activities that are done at the youth centre. The volunteer is also going to have a big opportunity to develop his or her own project ideas but at the same time help us to develop the areas that the youth are most interested in. At Stadsparkens youth centre the youth has shown extra interest in develop the music part and especially scratching and at Kristinebergs youth centre the youth has show interest in learning more about dance and theatre. This is also two things that we hope a volunteer are going to be able to help us.
As a volunteer at one of our project you will also have to work evenings and weekends.

Tasks
A volunteer at our project is going to get the opportunity do take part in a lot of different activities. As we said before we hope to find two volunteers that are extra interested in helping us to develop Kristinebergs dancing activities and Stadsparkens music activities and this is including helping us build the up the music room. But of course the volunteer are also going to get the opportunity to help and support us in the daily job with the café, different sport activities, when we go somewhere or when we organise a concert or an exhibition. The volunteer are also going to support and help the youth in the different activities that they want to do. It is not easy to say exactly what it can be because it can vary from day to day but it can be organise a table tennis tournament, billiard tournament or organise one of the girl or boy group activity. When the volunteer comes to us he or she will get the opportunity to try out all the different activities that we organise and it will also be up to the volunteer to develop their own project.
The volunteer is always going to be supported in the work by someone from the staff if the volunteer want the support.

Volunteer profile
We are looking for two volunteers that have a big interest in coming to our project and to Oskarshamn to help us develop the youth centres. We especially hope to find two volunteers that have an extra interest in helping us developing the dancing activities at Kristinebergs youth centre and scratching and music activities at Stadsparkens youth centre. But the most important is that the volunteer is drug free and that you have an opened mind and that you are interested in sharing your background and culture with the projects youth and staff as we are interested in sharing our background and culture with the volunteer.

The recruitment is going to be done together with some of the youth and the staff at the different youth centres and we are also going to have the support from the coordinating organisation of Kumulus from Kalmar. We will save all the application until it is time to select the volunteer and then we will read all the applications at the same time.

Risk prevention
The risk prevention work is going to be done in two levels. The first is at the project were we will show the volunteer how the daily work is done. Here we do not se any big risks and the volunteer will never work alone so if there should be any problems there is always some one from the staff that is going to be able to help and support the volunteer. If the volunteer do not feel safe with some parts of the work the volunteer are not going work with that any more.
The second part of the safety work is going to be done in cooperation with Kumulus and the regional EVS coordinator. The EVS centre in Kalmar has started to make a action plan on how to work with risk prevention. The purpose with the risk plan it to give the EVS centre and the projects a tool on how we are going to work if some volunteer should have an accident. The EVS centre has started to work together with the local church where they are going to be able to get support if some accident should happen.

What the EVS centre already are doing is a voluntary information list were they write down information about the volunteer, address and phone number to parents, allergies, passport number, contact information to the project, embassy number and also information on when they have had meetings with the volunteers etc. The EVS centre is also going to invite the volunteers to participate in different social activities and meetings during the project period.