Know how International Volunteering Works for Organisations - Erasmus+

My name is Mino Vincenti and I work with link, a youth organisation created in 2003 and based in Puglia in the south of Italy and since 2003 we organize a big variety of international and European projects for youth especially EVS European voluntary service and we act as a sending organization and as a hosting organisation.

Beside EVS we also organize a lot of training courses for youth workers and youth exchanges of course. But we also work with some other European programs such as Europe for citizens, Leonardo Da Vinci.

From the very beginning of our work in link we think that EVS is the action with Youth in Action first before 2012 and Erasmus+ now we are very the much convinced that EVS is the action which can really have and the impact on young people, EVS can change a young people's life and it's a great opportunity for them to discover a lot of things related to new skills new interpersonal and intercultural skills and many other important elements in the process of growing up of a young person.

We send about fifty volunteers per year and we host more or less the same number of volunteers but we are very focused on the short term EVS volunteers because we really believe that EVS can be an opportunity for so-called less opportunities young people and we are dealing a lot with the young people who are still searching for a place in the society still searching for my their role in the society so EVS for us is let's say a big chapter of our activity it's not the only one but I will say the biggest chapter I'll our activity.

What are the benefits for hosting it's not easy to see these benefits immediately when you start hosting you have to phase a lot of difficulties a lot of problems with the local community because they don't understand why these guys from another country they are here and what they are doing but I think it takes time and sooner or later you will see the benefits you will see in the society in the community like and acceptance of the new people coming from other countries from other cultures different languages and so on and I think that it depends on the activities of course but in our case we are also working as a coordinating organization so volunteers they are working with disabled people with the immigrants, with children in many different organizations.

So benefits a everywhere and it's a very hard to not be aware of it after 12 years working with EVS now we have it clear that everybody in town in the community can recognize the benefit of this guy, this young people coming here as a volunteer.

I think that sending and hosting should be should work very well together because the and they are influencing each other sending people it's easier when you host volunteers and hosting it's easier when you sent volunteers because you can create an environment where young people from your own country, in our case Italy, can meet other young people and they can learn about their decision of going abroad and so maybe they can learn that they can do the same and they feel like more comfortable
in deciding to go for EVS.

Sending is also very important and the benefits are also very clear to me because most of them of course come back the after their project in their own community and they can give something more depending on what you learn abroad during your EVS project and most of the time day the asked to cooperate with us so they become youth leaders for youth exchanges, some of them they become trainers but some of them they just go back to the daily life but with new competencies and with the new perspective on what is Europe, what is diversity what is intercultural learning, what is living together in Europe.

So for us sending its important as well and we push very much young people to live an experience doesn't matter can be EVS, it can be some other international opportunities but we also think that EVS is not the only opportunity for young people but we believe that it's one of the safest let's say opportunity to leave your own environment and to experience new things and to let's say to explore the world.

EVS is not an easy game so especially for hosting and especially if you work on inclusion as we do in Link.

What is very important is to have a structure or to have the people who is taking care of volunteers and it's very important that volunteers have a clear feeling that they are contributing to something for the local community where they work see if they have the feeling that they are wasting their time of course it's better not to do that. The other thing that I will suggest is to work very well around the role of the mentor the role of the tutor I mean having a group of people who really can and work with the volunteer and can facilitate the interaction with the local community and with local young people.