Rules and expectations

Dear partner,

as promised, I’m sending you now some (actually many) of the results and achievements, rules and regulations and expectations as they were agreed during the APV among the partner organisations:

• Participants and travel: First of all I would like to ask you to give me a feedback about your group. Please use the form (xls-file – see attachment as a reminderparticipants_form.xlsx (33131)) I sent you last week. I need the information till June10th (earlier is even better), because we need to order T-Shirts, arrange the houses, consult with the kitchen about diets etc. I also would need your travel details as soon as possible, as we need to make arrangements with the bus companies. If you have difficulties with keeping this deadline, please contact me.
• Rules and expectations: You’ll find a file with all that information attached. All this regulations have to be obeyed by any of your participants regardless if minor or not. Please make sure, that your participants, but also their parents, your colleagues and bosses know about it.
• Safety issues and risk management: Thanks to Fiona and NEELB for sharing your document with us (see attachment: risk assessment). Please read the document carefully prior to the meeting. The risk assessment document may help you to avoid dangers and threats against you and your group or at least gives you an idea, how to react in case of emergency.
• Evaluation and learning: As learning starts with preparation and reflection, we offer you a tool, which was developed by the NEELB (thanks again to Fiona for sharing): the LOG BOOK. I attached the first part of it and we expect you to fill it in with your participants carefully prior to the meeting. We know that time is running and therefore it doesn’t matter, if you do it together on the arrival day… The LOG BOOKs are mainly for the participants’ personal use and can also be used to fill in the Youth Passes after the project. During the youth exchange each participant will get the second part of the LOG BOOK. It contains a form for each day, a mid-term evaluation form and a form for the final evaluation. Please make sure, that one of the group leaders will be able to sit together with your group for 10-15 minutes per day (can be during lunch-break or when everybody’s already in their rooms) to take this part serious.
• Preparation and topic: We expect each group to – at least – to have an introduction into the topic with their team-leaders. We provided you some links and videos on the webpage --> global village. If you like to add something there or you want to share some results of your group, please email me! On day three we’ll have workshops addressing the overall topic and it’s possible that my colleague Anja will come back to you with some further questions or a little task. It might also be possible that we ask you for support with some of these workshops.
• Workshops: for the moment we have twelve workshops prepared, but we still would need support from the team leaders. The workshop-leaders themselves are fixed and some partners already signed in and took responsibility to support them. Please let me know, which workshop you want to join. It’s not necessary that you’re an expert in the method. Your job will rather be the one of a support person, a motivator for the participants etc. Here’s the list so far:

• Other jobs: we still need support for the following tasks: (1) the Info Café, which will be mainly run by Annika and a team of our EVS-volunteers and Zebnem (TR), (2) the animation and fun fire department to take care of the bored participants during the breaks in the afternoon and evening and offering them games or simply a chat. So far Kristina (EST), Michael (NI) and a German person volunteered. (3) evening program: many of the ideas are already fixed, but we could need any helping hand.
• Intercultural evening: since we’ll be many groups, we planned the intercultural evening quite flexible and open. The main idea is a market which we’re going to have in the circus-tent and each group gets one table to present their country, their organization etc. So please prepare this with your participants and bring what you need to bring. E.g. food, typical instruments, music, leaflets. We’ll provide paper and markers, tape and glue etc. All participants are allowed to move freely in the tent, but please make sure that one person always remains at the desk to answer questions etc. To make the whole evening a bit more interesting, we plan to offer the kids a quiz. For each group we’ll have two questions about their country, their culture etc. The idea of the quiz is to make people move around and get in dialogue with others to answer these questions. So please also prepare two questions for your group for this quiz!
• Other evening activities: also on the other evenings/nights we’ll have activities. For some movie nights we invite you to bring about 3 mini-videos (best is a video-file on a stick or on cd or dvd) that either address the overall topic of the global village or which are simply nice or funny. Best would be in English, with subtitles or understandable without words. For the final party on the last evening we invite you to bring some “nice” cloths to make it something special…
• Cloths and what to bring – part I (there might be a second part/reminder closer to the meeting): I’m repeating myself, but please bring a black AND a white T-Shirt for every participant and leader, which we can print on for costumes etc. For the workshops bring some comfortable (sport) clothes and shoes, for the time at the lake a swim-suit and maybe an extra towel. We’re not sure, what kind of weather we’ll expect, so bring both a kind of a rain-coat or something made from plastic and sun-cream (it might be rain or about 30 degrees Celsius). The surroundings are full of lake, which is beautiful, but also causes a lot of mosquitoes etc. during summertime. So please also bring some bug spray or mosquito protection cream. We also invite you to bring any kind of fancy or even giant sun-glasses or any other accessories that can be used as a costume during the show…
• Photographs and video: we’ll have both and decided that we won’t publish photographs, on which you can distinguish the faces of the participant on our facebook-site, but on the projects’ website. We use the videos and photographs for the activities during the meeting and to show it to the participants and their relatives after the training, but we’ll not give it for the use of other purposes. We also plan to shoot a video, which we’ll send to all partners after the training for the same purpose. Please make sure that this policy is clear to all participants and their legal representatives/parents, if necessary.
• Leader: we need to know from you, if it’s possible that one leader of your group can arrive one or two days prior to the group. We could simply need any helping hand and also want to have a team-meeting before the arrival day, if it’s possible. We also would need a photograph of you (please any picture, but where you can recognize your face!) to publish it with your name, your profession and your role during the youth exchange (no contacts!). The plan is to show who is in the team (workshop-leaders and organizers included) and to show that we’re working professionally. Besides participants might be curious, which faces they’re going to meet…We also want to invite you to show your talent on stage on Friday, 05.07., during the show of the (workshop)leaders. The idea is to show our participants that we’re also willing to stand in front of the spectators and to encourage them for their own show. So if you have any kind of talent, singing, playing guitar, a poem or even some acrobatics… you’re welcome!

Any questions? Please contact us. Besides that I’m counting on your creativity to solve the problems…

Best greetings

Dominik & team