Volunteer's Effect, international meeting for ex-EVS volunteers

Volunteer's Effect is a 4 day long meeting for ex-EVS volunteers from various countries. It will be held in Warsaw. During this time they will be focused of two main topics: creativity in a very wide context and working with local communites in the sphere of creative expression and its promotion, but also breaking prejudices and stereotypes that often are present within local context. AIMS Our aim is to collect a group of young active people who have 1. EVS experience and 2. creative passion or hobby and who use both of them to attract, gather other young people and to work with that kind of groups in a field of artistic creation, and further –establishing contact between those artistic / creative groups and the rest of local community. The reason why we want to gather that kind of leaders in one place is to compare the experiences, sharing practice of breaking the ices between young people and the communities (often suspicious to young people’s ways of expressing themselves), comparing methods and work on new ones. In the end, the final part of the meeting – creative action engaging Polish youth from Warsaw will be a testing ground for those new methods and strategies created by the group. We do believe, that recalling an EVS experience is very valuable here and we want to work on it too, as entering local community as a stranger is in so many ways similar to EVS. We want our participants to share ideas, compare and exchange experiences as well as develop new concepts and strategies to animate local communities, as well as unite them. We want to equip them in tools that will be useful in their future work with young people but also might be helpful to create projects that will include other groups as well. With this meeting we want to: - gather a group of of young people with international experience (EVS), active in a creative way interested in using their passions as a tool of influencing local communities or other individuals - share good practices and examples of overcoming difficulties - financial, administrative, social etc on the way of creating space for young people's creative expression - work together with local youth from different areas of Warsaw. Especially here the participants will use their EVS experience. In the end the group will prepare and organize a creative open-air action, a happening that will bring wider attention to value and potential of young people's ideas. PARTICIPANTS We are looking for former EVS volunteers, not necessarily youth workers, but active in their local field as informal group leaders, heading in the direction of youth work and willing to discuss and share their passions and methods of work with young people. To apply for this event, motivation to work on these topics, as well as communicative level of English and EVS experience is necessary (short-term or long-term, not necessarily in the field of art).