ICJA – ICYE Germany is raising awareness of the long-term ICYE volunteering programme in order to reach more young people and host families. In doing so, it seeks to create a distinct identity for its volunteering programme, distinguishing it from travel/voluntourism programmes and building thereby a wider network of volunteers and coworkers. This is being done by motivating former (returnee) volunteers to become active co-workers in the organisation, providing them training and support to lead awareness raising workshops and information sessions in vocational schools and other educational institutions.

TIME TABLE:

January to May 2017

• Workshops in vocational schools about global learning and voluntary service
• Participation at the “Evangelischer Kirchentag” (church congress) with an information desk.

July to August 2017

• The concept for workshops and info sessions to promote voluntary service will be revised based on the experiences in the vocational school workshops

August to September 2017

• Promoting the concept for educational / informative workshops on international volunteering at the returnee seminars

From September 2017

• Returnees hold workshops in their former schools
• Workshops in vocational schools continue

Events/Activities:

Workshops

Between January and May 2017, 15 workshops have been held in vocational schools throughout Germany. Teams made up of two former volunteers who had received training as multipliers used interactive methods to raise awareness of apprentices on global issues like “water”, “global trade” or “refuge and asylum”. In addition, the multipliers narrated their experiences as volunteers and encouraged workshop participants to go abroad themselves, for example, by making use of the state financed volunteering programmes ICJA offers (“EVS”, “IJFD” and “weltwärts”). The participants were particularly eager to find out about these programmes and also about the topics of the workshops, which had previously not been very relevant to their studies or everyday life.

Photos: 1) One of the vocational school workshops; 2) Publicity material used at the workshops.

Trainings

Between February and June 2017, ICJA held six four-day trainings for alumni who ran the workshops in the vocational schools mentioned above. The participants were introduced to the different workshop topics and practised methods that can be used in the schools for interactive sessions. These trainings were attended by 40 alumni in total, who were very eager to gain experience as multipliers and to contribute to global learning at vocational schools.

Photos of the different trainings:

Evangelischer Kirchentag

In May 2017, the “Evangelischer Kirchentag” a national congress held by the Protestant Church in Germany every two years which is open to everyone, offered a great opportunity to increase the visibility of ICJA’s volunteering programmes. A group of former (returnee) volunteers and staff of ICJA had lots of fun at the fair where organisations with all kinds of backgrounds and working on a wide variety of topics presented themselves!

For the “Evangelisher Kirchentag” ICJA had made a video, which they published at the event.

“Stop Motion” video made by ICJA

To increase their visibility on social media, ICJA made a short “stop motion” video to make interested young people aware of the next deadline for participating in the volunteering programme 2018- 2019. The video is in German and informs that the next deadline is 15th of August 2017.