Project+idea

Volunteerism is not a very popular activity among students in our regions. Nowadays, in this time of quick changes and economic prestige, our students have deviant values about the kind of people they are going to become. Students rarely undertake sharing their own free time and skills for the benefit of others, believing that they do not get anything out of it. The basic idea of our project is to teach students that volunteerism does not simply mean giving, but it should be considered more like an exchange in a process where the volunteer is also a receiver. For example, in the process of helping weaker students, volunteers simultaneously develop their tutoring skills, or, participating in activities for environmental protection volunteers help create a healthier environment not only for the benefit of others, but also for themselves. By volunteering, students develop their personality features, increase their self-esteem, self-confidence, compassion and empathy, etc. We are going to create an international group of students from two schools which will try to find ways to volunteer in their communities, to share their experiences and to promote volunteerism. For that purpose the schools will form Volunteers club and that way we will make volunteering as part of students regular extracurricular activities. Students will have the opportunity to meet volunteers and learn from them how they can volunteer, what will they gain from that, what will they accomplish and how they will change the community. They will choose where to volunteer from the offered possibilities – marking mountaineering paths orhelping students in school. The students will make plates, mark the paths, clean the mountaineering paths, organize remedial classes for weaker students in school or additional classes for acquiring special skills – chess, computers, or something else. By including the special needs children into volunteering activities we can show that literally everybody can make a change and help the others. The project will primarily be focused on promoting volunteerism as a regular extracurriculum activity that should be organized by every school, but also on its integration into the curriculum contents, especially in the school subjects such as Life Skills and Civic Education. We want to encourage students, teachers, parents and all the members of the community to devote a part of their time to helping others.