sicily

Bona Fides Association and Associazione Culturale Strauss are looking for a Polish volunteer to join our ESC project “XX-XY: Examining Exclusion Experiences among Youth” working with local community and youth. Interested in this opportunity please send us your CV and motivation letter to: mariachiara@bonafides.pl, k.zychowicz@bonafides.pl and projects@arcistrauss.it

Location: Sicily, Italy

Duration: 10 months

Mobility period: October 2019-August 2020

Deadline: 26.09.2019

Project description

During the first 3 months of the project, the volunteers will support Strauss’ staff in a research aimed at the analysis of the current situation in the local area, about equal opportunities. The whole local community, the educational institutions and the organisations operating in the territory with which Strauss cooperates, will be consulted through surveys, questionnaires and meetings. The results of this documentation will be evaluated in a study that will be the basis of the activities that the volunteers will support starting from their 4th month of service when Strauss will activate a series of workshops, thematic conversation clubs and public visions of docu-movies, in which there will not be just information on the core theme of the project, but beneficiaries will be able to build a real strategy to overcome the critical issues emerged during the ‘research activities through non-formal education actions built around the fields and areas in which the recognition and respect of rights is required. In this sense, volunteers will support Strauss in the designing and implementation of an updated and modern revision of all the documents that, starting from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, have addressed the issue of equal opportunities and gender equality, in order to learn through internalizing concepts that, otherwise, might remain just an abstract theory. At the end of this phase of the activities, volunteers and youngsters involved in the project proposal, will compose the products of the path “DID IT – Dive Into Diversity Improving Territories”, meant to raise awareness on the issues addressed in the local community. DID IT will be expressed in an advertising campaign through social media, in multimedial productions and in a publication of stories against gender discrimination, with the aim of making the territory more conscious about problems and stereotypes often not recognized in the proper way and considered, erroneously, an immutable and socially accepted status quo.

In addition to this, volunteers could be involved, if they want to, in other activities that Strauss runs during the whole year, like language support in schools, activities in a centre for disabled people and in a group home for disadvantaged minors, environment awareness campaigns and beautification of a urban park.

Volunteer’s profile

Keen interest for the project contents;

Real motivation for the experience;

Willingness to live and work in a multicultural environment;

Respect and sense of responsibility towards people and things.

Accomodation

The volunteer will be housed in the apartment upper the association’s  office, of which Strauss is owner, thanks to an agreement with the  Municipality of Mussomeli. The structure is part of the Palazzo Spinnato. Since 2015 the organisation is hosted inside the “Centro Europeo per la Cultura Francesca Sorce”, dedicated to a social worker of  Mussomeli died in the fulfilment of her duty. The floor planned to host volunteers has 2 entrances, one internal and connected with the offices and another one completely independent. The “House of the Volunteer” is provided with 5 bedrooms, all with window, with a total area of 113 square meters, a kitchen of about 32 square meters, 2 areas for toilets and divided by gender for a total of about 38 square meters, a laundry room, a solarium and other common spaces for more than 150 square meters. There is also a storage closet to set many (personal or of common use) things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3jDaTT5DE4

Town

Mussomeli presents one of the most conserved Old Towns in Sicily, partly still inhabited. Mussomeli is an Italian town of around 12000 inhabitants in the province of Caltanissetta in Sicily. Mussomeli rises on an internal hilly area the so called Alta Valle del Platani or Vallone, east of the river Platani, in central Sicily, located 765 meters on the level of sea and with a surface of 164 Km2, a housing density of 69,80 for Km2 and areas destined to public green equal to m2 44.760 including an urban park and small villas lay in the internal and surrounding areas of the town.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05Lf9vuNc4E