Lettre d’une organisation d’accueil aux candidats

Dear sending-associations and volunteers,

Because of some unpleasant experiences with previous volunteers, we have decided to write this letter to let you better understand the difficulties that hosting organisations must face when volunteers arrive with a very superficial motivation. Please, read it and let it read to your volunteers before their departure. Thanks !

We must say that most of the volunteers coming from European Countries do not have any clear idea about volunteering and what the commitment that they take is. They always talk about learning another language, different cultures and meeting new people. We have the impression that generally sending associations push on this possibility. But who is the young person that doesn’t want to have this chance ?

It is necessary to underline that also people coming to Italy for tourism or work can have the possibility "to know another language, different cultures and meeting new people". We are involved in EVS since 1998 as a coordinating organisation and we received more than 250 volunteers. From our experience, we assumed that EVS is something MORE.

Many young people are, above all, looking for a deep changing in their life, and we have seen that many of them have succeeded in it (for example understanding much better what is the faculty they would like to attend, starting to study again if they have left school, sensitizing to the reality of life and changing the superficial life that they used to live and so many other cases) but, all of that can only happen if the volunteer is really motivated for the commitment that he/she takes joining an EVS project.

If sending associations, that have the chance to meet the volunteers before us, prepare them superficially, what can we do when we receive them not motivated at all, or at least opened to be ?

Many of them have the idea to come in a kind of factory, claiming rights and not prepared for duty at all. Sometimes we have the impression to have enemies inside. It is necessary to understand that in the communities that host people in serious difficulties, (addiction, prostitution, jail, illness, abandoned children and so on) not motivated volunteers can bring disorder and break the harmony that Responsibles hardly try to create. Of course, it is our duty to work a lot stimulating them, but it is quite difficult when they are prepared for something else, expecting more or less a kind of holiday. We give a big importance to free time in the project, it gives them interest in the project, fun and the possibility to make other people know their own culture, but it cannot be the priority : commitment, service and free time must have the same importance. Only in this way the project will succeed.

Working in a non-profit community or association, giving them a real hand of solidarity, is a big experience for a young person and, as it happened to many other volunteers in the past, it can help the personal growth and the understanding of what the path of their life can be in the future. Language, culture and so on will come automatically !