In this series, we learn about volunteering opportunities within the ICYE network all over the world. This time it’s Sloavakia’s turn to be in the spotlight. Read what Miriam Petríková from ICYE Slovakia, KERIC, tells about volunteering with KERIC.

Interview & photo: Minna Räisänen

Miriam Petriková from the youth organization KERIC welcomes new volunteers to their team: “If you would like to be part of KERIC community, experience life in Slovakia, and like working with children, we are the right place for you.”

Could you please introduce KERIC?

KERIC is a non-profit, non-governmental youth organization that works with children and young people aged 7–30 years, and also with adults from the Kysuce region. We offer various activities with an international dimension, which develop the personality of children and young people and vary according to the needs of individuals and groups. We are trying to connect our Kysuce region with Europe and gradually with the whole world.

Dozens of young people take the opportunity to travel abroad and have unique experiences in countries around the world. Every year, volunteers visit us in Čadca to share their culture, customs, and languages through fun activities.

We send groups of young people from 13 to 30 years of age to the world for international youth exchanges. The aim is to meet young people from other countries, spend some time together, cooperate during activities and communicate together in a foreign language. In this informal way, young people gain new experiences, knowledge, and contacts.

We have been cooperating with primary and secondary schools in Kysuce for a long time. Throughout the school year, once or twice a week, volunteers from abroad attend schools and help motivate pupils and students, especially in foreign language classes.

In addition, we organize regular educational activities for local youth, such as workshops on engaging topics, webinars with guests, creative workshops for school clubs, and language courses for different age groups. We also host summer camps for children aged from 7 to 16. All of this allows young people to get to know themselves better and develop their potential.

What is the most rewarding and challenging aspect of your work?

We enjoy everything we do. We are constantly learning and adapting to new conditions. We try to supplement what is missing in society, and help people meet their needs. We create space for young people to express themselves and realize their ideas. We also discuss topics that are not much talked about in a creative and open way. Every obstacle brings us forward and so we grow together.

When it comes to forming connections via international volunteering, what kinds of connections has Keric gained through the European Solidarity Corps?

We have worked in the field of volunteering for almost twenty years. During this period we have established a lot of good partnerships and we try to maintain them. We had a strategy to visit the majority of the projects where we send volunteers and to have a personal experience with the host organization, people there and activities. Another strategy was to invite our project partners for study visits or seminars so that they could get to know our project personally.

The third way of staying in contact with our partners was created during the pandemic. We organize live streams with our partners through which they can introduce their projects. These interviews are recorded and candidates for the European Solidarity Corps projects can then watch them during the preparation period.

What kind of tasks do you offer for European Solidarity Corps volunteers? How has the cooperation with long-term ESC volunteers contributed to your work community?

The tasks of our volunteers are very diverse. Firstly, the volunteers help to run communication courses for children. They prepare and run the lessons together with a young Slovak teacher. The aim of the courses is to motivate children to speak English, experience the culture of the volunteer, and have fun while speaking English. The volunteers do not have to know English very well. Their role is to motivate the kids to speak a foreign language.

Secondly, the volunteers cooperate with one or two schools in Cadca or nearby villages. The aim of the cooperation is to add an international dimension to the schools. The volunteers help teachers during their lessons, using non-formal education tools. It can be language lessons but also sports, art, IT, science, math, etc. The volunteers organize games and creative activities with the students or support the teacher in any way needed. In some classes, the volunteer might help students who need special support due to a disability or other reason.

The volunteers are motivated to get involved in the school life – to take part in school trips, special events, sports tournaments, etc. The volunteers also hold classes for students to let them experience the culture, country, and the language of the volunteer, through methods of non formal education. The volunteers prepare their activities alone or with the support of the KERIC staff.

Thirdly, once a week, the volunteers help in running the KERIC office. This task involves everyday office tasks, paperwork, preparing leaflets about our activities, updating the KERIC website and Facebook, cleaning and taking care of the facilities in KERIC, or other little tasks depending on the needs of the organization.

The volunteers are part of the KERIC team. Their personalities, experiences and needs influence activities that we offer to our local community. They bring new international dimensions to our organization and the life of our community. During the first weeks, the volunteers are actively involved mainly in teaching. Later on, they may want to get more involved in other activities, such as sports, or social work. The volunteers can also take part in a language course of their own choice.

How has Keric adapted to the COVID-19 situation? How do you see the future of international volunteering in your organization, post-COVID-19?

The COVID-19 period was hard, but the challenges we faced developed our activities in positive ways. The pandemic affected three groups of our volunteers. The first group was affected on the second half of their project. We did our best to support the group’s team spirit. We created many new modules of education, started to apply distance learning, and did a lot of hiking in our region. We took it as a challenge and we were enthusiastic to study new tools and transfer our typical activities into an online space. We did many live streams and funny challenges online. I consider this period both challenging and inspiring.

When we started to host a new group of volunteers in September 2020, we tried to put our learning experiences from spring 2020 into use to develop further our educational activities. We created methodologies for online meetings, and planned how to educate our volunteers on using IT technologies to fulfill our aims in education. It was important to focus on the mental health of our volunteers and team members, so we continued with outdoor team building activities.

Now, we are hosting the third group of volunteers and I have a feeling that the pandemic is a part of our work, plans and life.

Your greetings to those interested in volunteering in Slovakia?

We really like our KERIC community. The challenges connected with hosting young people from different countries and with different skills, knowledge and experience lead our community to unexpected positive discoveries. If you would like to be part of this community, experience life in Slovakia, and like working with children, we are the right place for you.

This article has been extracted from Maailmanvaihto’s magazine Volunteers’ Voices 1/2022 edition with the theme of connections via international volunteering. You can find the full magazine and previous releases here.

Dasha, a European Solidarity Corps volunteer from Russia, shares what it’s like to build connections with people when there’s a language barrier present.

Text: Daria Aleksandrovna Panarina
Photo: Kisälli-Harjulanmäki

Volunteer Dasha Panarina (left) is preparing a board with Maslenitsa characters for the masks at Kisälli. In the photo, Daria is working together with Heidi Lohtander, and Aleksander Kämärä is working in the background.

Hi! My name is Dasha Panarina. I’m 22 years old and come from the region of Tatarstan, Russia. I have been volunteering in Finland for five months now. I am working in an arts and crafts workshop at Kisälli-Harjulanmäki in Vihti where I assist people with mental disabilities with different handicrafts, for example, weaving carpets and making bags, and in their daily activities.

Learning to communicate through gestures and sounds

My mother tongues are Russian and Tatar but in the volunteering project, in order to communicate with my colleagues, I use English. The students at Kisälli speak Finnish, but they also know a few phrases in Swedish, Russian, Spanish and other languages. Since I know only a little bit of Finnish and the students — just very few phrases in Russian, I feel like I am communicating as if I was a child again, trying to express everything with gestures and sounds. This is the well-forgotten way to communicate. In the beginning, it was difficult to explain to the students that I didn’t understand them. Later on, I learned the Finnish phrase ‘Minä en ymmärrä’ (‘I don’t understand’) and picked up some other frequently used phrases in Finnish, which made it easier to communicate.

The arts and crafts that we do with the students take time. During this process, there is constant communication, because I need to monitor the process. In one way or another, we need to communicate. While doing their work, some students like to share something from their lives, for example, about their dogs and nephews. That way, a dialogue is started. Art is also a very associative thing. To explain something, students need to use familiar concepts. For example, in order to make a circle on a sheet, some students may refer to a ball to explain what they want to do.

“While doing their work, some students like to share something from their lives, for example, about their dogs and nephews. That way, a dialogue is started.”

Finding new ways of self expression

Right now, I have started creating my own personal project. My project is based on the celebration of Maslenitsa, a Slavic festival dedicated to the farewell of winter and the welcoming of spring. In Finland, winters are as long as in Russia, and I thought that it would be nice to share this cultural tradition of my country. The idea is to make papier-mache masks of Maslenitsa characters together with the students and celebrate this holiday with them. I hope that the time spent together preparing for this celebration will allow me to build closer connections with the students.

Creating my personal project was also a new way to express myself and participate at work. Before arriving in Finland, I was an environmental student. That was not related to creativity at all. I can probably say that the whole expression of myself was constrained to writing reports and reading academic literature. This personal project at Kisälli provided me an opportunity to express myself creatively.

“Now I have found ways to communicate with the students, know some Finnish and I can roughly understand what they are talking about.”

Connecting through sharing

For me, in general, it is difficult to establish deep connections as I am an introvert. But with the students we connect by laughing together at jokes, sharing the same songs or something else we’re both familiar with. Recently, we talked about a disco sauna on wheels from Kirovsk, Russia. Sometimes, someone sings Russian songs like Pugacheva’s ‘Millions of scarlet roses’ and so on. I can’t say that we share the same things all the time but finding these few things we both have in common has allowed us to connect.

At the beginning of the project, I didn’t know Finnish at all and although I had an idea about people with mental disabilities, I didn’t know exactly what to expect from them. I can say that everything turned out better than I thought. Now I have found ways to communicate with the students, know some Finnish and I can roughly understand what they are talking about. Working with people with mental disabilities has definitely taught me to be more patient.

This article has been extracted from Maailmanvaihto’s magazine Volunteers’ Voices 1/2022 edition with the theme of connections via international volunteering. You can find the full magazine and previous releases here.

Are you aged 18–30 years? Would you like to develop your know-how and language skills & learn about organic farming? Are you interested in international co-operation?

Apply for European Solidarity Corps volunteering at Vanhamäki! Vanhamäki is an activity center and an organic farm located in Suonenjoki in Northern Savonia. The center produces berries and vegetables, offers activities for its visitors, and organizes activities for people who have fallen out of the job market.

Vanhamäki is looking for a young person for a volunteering period at Vanhamäki, primarily 1.5.–31.10.2022, when three other European Solidarity Corps volunteers from different sides of Europe will volunteer at Vanhamäki, too. Nevertheless, the starting time and the length (4–6 months) can be flexibly agreed upon with the participant.

Apply if you are interested in organic farming and international co-operation! You will get to work and live with other young European Solidarity Corps volunteers from different countries. You will have a chance to learn new skills, practice your language skills and advance intercultural understanding through everyday co-operation.

During your volunteering period, you will get to do different kinds of tasks outdoors and indoors. From spring to autumn, the tasks will concentrate on organic farming, from planting to harvesting. In addition, you will get to assist in making organic products, in social media tasks, and in maintenance work of the park area of Vanhamäki. You can also, according to your skills, help in planning and carrying out events, in office work and in kitchen work. You can also assist in organizing activities for unemployed people.

What is the European Solidarity Corps?

European Solidarity Corps is an EU-funded program that supports the international volunteering of young people. In the European Solidarity Corps, young people participate in projects which strengthen solidarity and social cohesion. Welcome to join in are all those 18–30-year old young people and organizations which want to work for a more solidary society.

For whom?

The position is meant for a young asylum seeker or a young person with a refugee or immigrant background who is living in Finland. Through the volunteering period, we wish to advance the integration of the young person to Finland and at the same time offer them international experience.

The position can fit you well if you are aged 18–30-years, and recognize yourself from these:

• I am interested in organic farming and nature.
• I enjoy practical tasks and teamwork.
• I am ready to work outdoors during different seasons.
• I can communicate in English in practical situations.

You don’t need to have any prior education or work background, and if you wish, you can receive support for learning Finnish during your volunteering period.

Accommodation and other practical arrangements

You will be accommodated in your own room in a building in Vanhamäki. You will have access to a shared kitchen and bathroom. Daily meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) will be partly offered in the restaurant of Vanhamäki, and partly you will cook meals out of ingredients offered by Vanhamäki.

You will be provided with travels to Vanhamäki, accommodation, and daily meals. In addition, you will get pocket money 5 euros in a day (150–155 € / month) as well as insurance for the duration of your volunteering period. Vanhamäki is located about three kilometers away from the center of Suonenjoki. If you wish, you can borrow a bicycle from Vanhamäki for your journeys to the center.

Accessibility

The volunteering tasks related to organic farming are mostly physical, and the buildings of Vanhamäki are not completely accessible, for example. If you are an applicant with a physical or sensory disability, please contact us prior to applying for consultation if the volunteering environment and tasks would be suitable for you and if the support needed could be arranged.

Vanhamäki’s website and social media channels

Website: vanhamaki.fi
The volunteers of Vanhamäki in Instagram
Vanhamäki in Instagram
The volunteers of Vanhamäki in Facebook
Vanhamäki in Facebook

Get to know also the experiences of Vanhamäki’s volunteers, on Maailmanvaihto’s website.

How to apply?

Download and fill in Maailmanvaihto’s application form for European Solidarity Corps volunteering (docx). Send your filled-in form to Maailmanvaihto: hosting@maailmanvaihto.fi. Apply as soon as possible, because the position will be filled as soon as a suitable candidate is found.

Please, notice: In the form, we ask for the name, quality label number, and OID number of your sending support organization. You can leave this question unanswered because in this case a sending support organization is not needed. Similarly, you can leave unanswered the question of who is your contact person in your sending support organization.

Further information

Would you like to ask something about the open position for European Solidarity Corps volunteering? Please, contact us – we will be happy to answer! You can reach us at hosting@maailmanvaihto, and +358 (0)44 318 0888.

The international ICYE network aims at leveling the global playfield by setting up a new scholarship fund – the South-to-South Scholarship Fund – for volunteer exchanges between countries of the Global South.

Each year ICYE Finland sends up to 40 volunteers out into the world, most of them young adults between the ages of 18 and 30. Similarly, the organisation receives annually around 30–40 young volunteers from various parts of the world. Many of these volunteer exchanges take place through the international ICYE network.

In 2021, the federation of International Cultural Youth Exchange (ICYE) consists of 39 member organisations (sometimes called ‘national committees’), all representing ICYE in their respective countries. The ICYE network seeks to promote intercultural understanding, equal opportunities, tolerance and peace by providing young adults participating in the program with challenging learning experiences in a foreign country. Another important goal is to promote the personal growth of the participants of the program by providing the opportunity to participate in international volunteering programs.

On an annual basis, up to 700 people carry out their international volunteer exchanges within the ICYE network. Most of these volunteer exchanges take place between the countries of the Global North and the Global South. Participation costs are typically offset between national organisations using program fees paid by participants: each national organisation receiving a certain amount of compensation for hosting a foreign volunteer. Sometimes local activities are funded also through project funding, such as cooperation with the European Solidarity Corps.

“The South-to-South Scholarship Fund was founded to bridge the economic gap that exists between young people in the countries of the Global South and the Global North.”

Within the federation, the relative lack of volunteer exchanges within the Global South was first taken note of in the early 2010s. In fact, between 2015 and 2018, less than one percent of a total of 2778 volunteer exchanges took place between two countries of the Global South. A deeper examination revealed the main reasons for this disparity to be structural: the federation found that there are no financially supported programs in the Global South within the ICYE network (while, for example, in 2015, 91 percent of German volunteers enrolled through a state-sponsored volunteer program); in addition, travel and visa costs are often relatively more expensive for participants coming from the Global South, and their flight routes often compile into imposingly massive collections of connection flights.

The federation organised workshops around this theme of disparity to find out where the federation could best intervene. One result of these workshops was publicised in the summer of 2021, when ICYE announced the launch of a global scholarship fund for young people in the South called the “ICYE South-to-South Scholarship Fund”. We asked two members of the South-to-South Scholarship Fund working group to tell us more about ICYE as a federation, and the newly announced fund, and its background.

Courtney Kelner works at the ICYE International Office in Berlin representing the perspective of the International Office. Mercie Kubasu represents ICYE Kenya’s office and brings us some perspective from the Global South. Both have played an important role in promoting the development of the fund.

First off, who are you? Please tell us something about your work in the ICYE network.

Courtney: I started working at the international ICYE office in Berlin in early 2021. I have previously worked in the volunteer sector in the field of environmental protection. My volunteer history began 15 years ago in Kyrgyzstan with the U.S. Peace Corps where I met lovely people in the activist field. And the South-to-South fund has definitely been the favorite theme in my current work! The COVID-19 period has affected the beginning of my time in the office in a challenging way, namely with the lack of face-to-face encounters with the people with whom I work, but luckily the internet connects me well to both my local and international colleagues.

Mercie: I have been working for the ICYE Kenya office in Nairobi since 2016. I come from a background of studying international business administration, and during the last five years I have learned a lot about the world of international volunteering. A three-month office exchange with the German ICYE office (ICJA) gave me a bit of experience similar to what our volunteers go through and increased my understanding of the structural challenges related to the international volunteering network, and I enjoy putting to use this enhanced understanding in my work with IVS (international volunteer service).

How does the international ICYE network function? What kind of decision-making and executive structures does the federation have?

Courtney: ICYE consists of a federal structure where its members, i.e. national organisations, are independent actors. Simultaneously, however, each organisation is dependent on its partners. Such a structure requires partners to trust each other. Shared values, jointly developed agreements and policies help build and maintain trust between organizations. We have a lot of faith in the solidarity within the network. The biennial General Assembly, with representatives from each national organisation, decides the broad lines and direction of action of the network. The ICYE Board, composed of representatives of national organisations, is responsible for implementing the decisions of the General Assembly. The Board is elected for two years at a time and meets twice a year. The ICYE International Office in Berlin is responsible for developing the volunteering program and cooperation networks on the practical level. For success in cooperation, it is crucial that the actors themselves are involved in creating the rules so that they themselves believe in the common principles. ICYE’s decision-making system is therefore very horizontal. It has its advantages, but the downside may be a sluggishness of decision-making. For different working groups, such as those set up around this fund, the pace of assembly can be much faster, as required.

Mercie: I like to compare the role of the international office to a backbone. National organisations act like the limbs of the body and the international office ensures the functioning of the limbs. It is true that the governing style of the ICYE network takes its own time, but I appreciate its democratic nature. It is also important that the representatives of the member organisations themselves choose to be involved in the development of the federation, and ICYE provides a good foundation for this. However, each individual brings their own views into the mix on how to develop policies. I find that working in a multicultural network also teaches a certain kind of cultural humility, which is a valuable skill in international cooperation.

How did the South-to-South Scholarship Fund get started?

Courtney: The ICYE network has been keeping its eye on the relative sparseness of volunteer exchanges between countries in the Global South. In effect, there is a huge gap between the number of North-to-South exchanges and South-to-South exchanges. Many of the root causes of the problem are structural, starting with challenging flight routes and expensive travel costs, but much could also be done to change attitudes. Today, there is a growing awareness and interest in various aspects of social justice, and ICYE wants to play its part in the development. We found that one of the most substantial things we can influence is our own support systems. Consequently, the South-to-South Scholarship Fund was founded to bridge the economic gap that exists between young people in the countries of the Global South and the Global North. We also certainly have a part in replaying neo-colonial structures – despite better intentions – and the federation is trying to do what it can to ensure that we do not strengthen these structures further in the future.

Mercie: Indeed, through my own work I have noticed how much work there is to be done especially in changing the attitudes of local youth towards volunteering, other than South-to-North. Funded voluntary exchanges between countries of the Global South would make it more attractive for young people to visit other countries in the Global South. Often, when heading from South to North, people seek other opportunities in life in addition to gaining volunteering experience. As the Global South as a destination for volunteering increases in attractiveness, cultural exchange and experiences will hopefully also diversify. I hope that as a result countries of the Global South will find more young people, richer from their volunteer experience, willing to return to their respective home countries, thus slowing down the infamous ‘brain drain’ effect.

What hopes do you have for the impact of the South-to-South Scholarship Fund?

Mercie: One of my hopes is that the local offices of the Global South of the ICYE network would no longer be so heavily dependent on volunteers from the Global North and the program fees they pay. International volunteering is a great opportunity to gather professionally useful skills, and often there is a lot of personal growth taking place along the way as well. I hope that with the help of this new fund, we will bring in more young people into volunteering through the ICYE network, and that ICYE will gain more recognition as a globally influential organization within the field of international volunteering.

Courtney: I hope that in the future we will have an increasingly diverse set of participants, and there no longer would be the need to come from a well-off family to gain international volunteering experience. At a more general level, it would also be great to see local ICYE offices receive funding tied to increasingly local contexts and be less dependent on European funding.

Screenshots: In August, ICYE organized for ICYE organizations an online info event on the lauch of the fund.

Text and screenshots: Mia-Elina Aintila

The text is a translation of the Finnish article “Uudella stipendirahastolla kohti tasa-arvoisempaa vapaaehtoistyökenttää” which has been published in the magazine MaailmanVaihtoa – Volunteers’ Voices 2/2021.

How can you donate to the South-to-South fund?

• Learn more about the fund on the website of ICYE.
• Donate via Betterplace.org.