We’re HERE to help you BEFORE YOUR PROJECT!
The teaching team (made up of the funniest members of the SVI) is conscripted once or twice a month to spend a weekend with volunteers who are getting ready for a short or midterm project. As the saying goes: “Bad things come to those who do not get prepared” Well… it may be a bit exaggerated, but it’s not far from reality.
Or as Sophie likes to say: “A well-prepared volunteering project is always successful!”
These weekends are great meetings, taking place in TUBIZE, Belgium, and PERPIGNAN, France. They will give important tools: the tools for an enjoyable and meaningful project!
Recipe for a successful preparation weekend:
First, a delicious MENU:
- Exchanging about apprehensions, motivations and interculturalism.
- Debating on value scales.
- Answering practical questions regarding the organisation of the project.
End your meal with a tasty DESSERT:
- Civic commitment.
- Highlighting the differences between humanitarian and volunteering.
- Our fight against voluntourism (our militant side).
- Importance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
- Importance of media and social media, more specifically when it comes to freedom of speech and hate speech.
- Tiramisu made by Sophie.
The cutlery : our Enthusiasm. You’re not likely to get bored or fall asleep during our preparation weekend! We play, we approach many important concepts through activities like roleplay, miming…
Great chefs: YOU AND US. There’s you, the team, some of the coordinators, but also former volunteers who come and share their testimony, their experience, and their craving for enthusing you!
Our secret touch: a bit of MAGIC. And by “magic”, we mean the group. A group of young people cooking together, sharing some specialties of their homeland, discovering each other. All these informal moments are just as important as the training in itself, because they are at the basis of our associative life. They are the bedrock of the SVI. They make it stand. For today and tomorrow.