Association IKS is partner on another European learning mobility project called Euro-Rame. In partnership with Point Europa, an organisation based in Millbrook (on the Rame Peninsula), a rural area in South West England, IKS hosted a group of senior volunteers on a week long job shadowing mobility in Petrinja. The project started in 2020 and is finishing on the 30.12.2022.The Euro-Rame Project comprises of 4 “mobilites” to partner countries: France, Croatia, Greece and Spain. The participants are staff, members and volunteers of Point Europa.
This project aims to improve the skills of the Point Europa team through active participation in the teams the partners: use of job shadowing, observation and training tools. Point Europa has identified the following needs in terms of developing team and organizational skills: – intercultural competences: linguistics, self-awareness, identity, ways of breaking down barriers combatting xenophobia and cultural differences; communication skills: strategy in terms of external relations, media, dissemination of mobility information. – know-how: working with all (including disadvantaged groups and especially young adults) towards educational mobility – knowing: to increase the efficiency of the actors of the information by the knowledge and the discovery of methods / projects of innovative work – know-how: developing motivation and pro-activity through better knowledge of its field of work and its impact – Intergenerational working, community engagement.
A group of 6 senior volunteers aged between 65 and 85 joined the IKS team over a job shadowing week packed with various activities that aimed towards sharing and exchanging knowledge, good practices, experience and support the local community with volunteering activities. Anne, Jack, Kim, Linda, Tony and Dawn joined our team between 05.-12.09.2022 and enrichened our community with their presence.
We started the week with a volunteering action and some physical activity in Hrastovica. We were picking grapes, apples, plums, mastering the weeds, singing and enjoying the fresh air and late summer sun while our masterchefs Valentina and Melita took care of the barbecue and refreshments to restore our strength. We got to know each other better and share cultural differences and similaries, but also disccuses expectations, work and life in general. In the following days the group organised and took part in activities such as Exploratory walk through Petrinja, exploring history, culture, contemporary society and the ways of living of a post war and post natural disaster community throug spatial experience. We also organised an educative and exploratory workshop in collaboration with our local partners from the Association of blind people Sisak Moslavina county about ways of functioning and obstacles blind and visually impaired persons from our community face on a daily basis, while doing an open drop in sensibilisation action for the general community in Sisak. Volunteers had the chance to experience movement and perception deprived from the visual senses and shortly jump into blind and visually impaired persons shoes. We learned the mobility tehniques for blind and visually imapired persons, using the white crane, tehniques of finding objects according to sound and protecitve movement tehniques. The participants also got familiar with the Brailler letter and difficulties the infrastructure and society put up. The Point Europa group also took part in producing a podcast on the topic of migration and special emphasis on senior volunteering and learning mobilities together with our volunteer from Colombia and supported a gardening and cleaning action at the local youth club Skwhat in Sisak. There they had the chance to meet and exchange with local young people and learned about community actions,the NGO sector and volunteering in Sisak Moslavina county and Croatia generally. We organised a cleaning action around the temporary container socio cultural center of IKS in Petrinja, equipping it, cleaning the surrounding and creating the ”Peninsula Pathway”, a safe and secure path made to connect the socio cultural center and the neighbouring kindergarden to ensure safe pass of children coming to activites there. Additionally we organised a nature cleaning action around the temporary housing container village in Mošćenica where citizens who lost housing during the earthquake wave in 2020/2021 found shelter until the reconstruction of their homes. Aside from these, we used the time to exchange information and practices when it comes to international mobilities for youth, adults and elderly people, Erasmus+ programes, project management, intercultural learning, tips and trick on mapping, supporting and developing anwers to the needs of communities, especially in post natural disaster contexts. During our ”free time” we explored the nature, food, spent quality time together and learned from each other.
It was a very enrichning experience for the Association IKS as we had the opporutnity to experience and learn more about hosting senior volunteers and their needs.
We want to thank Anne, Tony, Jack, Linda, Dawn and Kim for the time the spent with us, all vise stories they shared, all the support they gave and especially for the opportunity to learn from each other and focus on community and intergenerational solidarity.
The project is funded by the European Comission and Eramus+.
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