Planing. Tools that you have - Youthpass part 0.2

As I promised in the previous post, today I am going to give more details about the competences, and about how can we plan our learning during the EVS, what all the competences are about, to what we should pay more attention and not only.

First of all, EVS projects are about not only voluntary work and the benefits that you Hosting organization can have from your work as a volunteer in their organization, but also about you, about a learning process that you can get through your activities.

The basic and the main tools from what you can benefit and that is having as a goal to give you main ideas about the whole programme and about what you can gain are the trainings that you must have: such as APV in case it’s necessary, the pre-departure training that is given from your Sending Organization. The second and one of the most important is the arrival-indicative meeting with your hosting organization. Your supervisor. Your mentor. The on arrival training. And the last but not the least the mid-term training, both trainings are provided by the local National Agency from your hosting country.

This tools must be provided by the project. And everybody has the right to benefit from them. Even if it might look like many opportunities for you, it is not enough, because they are very general and should provide you basic info about the hosting country, about the programme itself and basic tips. The other part and even more important is the learning process that is generated by the whole working process.

Maybe you will be the lucky one, and your project will have a very specific topic which will help you to understand what can you learn from it, regarding your main activities. But if your project is more general. You have to make a learning plan together with your supervisor. To have weekly meeting where you can talk about the working plan, about the goals that you will be able to accomplish. Sure, your supervisor must play the main role into the whole process of your non-formal learning. But you should not rely only on him/her. You need to have a separate plan about what would you like to learn, what will be your benefits from the project, and how to get it.

One easy way to do it, is to have an agenda or a blog, to make a calendar plans, for what will you do, also to make records of all your activities that you have done, and not the last one, to set goals even from the beginning, they might change during the process but still it will be a good way for you to understand where you need more work to do and where are you done already. A good recommendation is to do a small research about the all 8 competences which will help you to set your goals in a right and realistic way.

This is just some options, but you should not put any borders in front of your regarding this… there are still many ways to plan your whole learning process that will help you at the end to have a better idea of what to put in your youthpass. Don’t be shy and use everything that comes to your hand the new society the other co-workers, the ex-volunteers, friends, local media etc.

Good luck, all you need is to know what you want from your project, and why did you apply, the rest will come naturally. In the next post I will talk about the competences!