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VOLUNTEER IN PEÑAS BLANCAS
GENERAL INFORMATION
Start: 06.09.2024
End: 07.08.2025
The schedule of volunteer activities will be between 30 and 38 hours per week.
A significant part of our educational activities are carried out outdoor, except for rainy days, low temperatures (10-12 days a year) and windy days. We set up two large shelves with all-terrain wheels, and created two outdoor classrooms.
The volunteers will have the same schedule as the Peñas Blancas School teaching staff. They will accompany the teaching team and the children from Monday to Friday from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm. Outside the hours when the children attend the school, they will follow the work of organization and structure of the school with the teachers, attending the weekly routine meetings, supporting in the maintenance and organization of spaces and preparing the activities they wish to lead if they feel like, at some point in their volunteer project, to do so and if the volunteers decide to lead any of the activities proposed by the children. The weekly schedule of the teachers at Peñas Blancas is 36 hours.
In the first part of the day, we have joint moments of dialogue and concentration time dealing with the areas of mathematics and reading and writing in a cross-cutting manner with science, geography, language, music, history, etc.
We have two different groups in primary school (6-8 years old on one side, 9-12 years old on the other) and a group of infants. The second part of the day which we call “Workshops” takes place after our free play where everything is available but no specific activity is organized, we call this time “Blank time”, and these two groups in primary school are not so not so differentiated, it can happen that children of 6 years old are doing the same activity with children of 12 years old.
More specifically, our volunteer will carry out their tasks (depending on the needs of the team and their own skills) within the following areas:
Kindergarten: accompany children in activities (painting, writing or free play) and help teachers with collecting toys from the classroom.
Primary Education: Helping children with doubts (whenever possible) in language and maths. Assisting in the preparation and collection of experiments for science workshop or cooking. Monitoring the children's playtime together with the rest of the teachers.
Language area (English and French): speaking in these languages (whenever possible) with the children as a form of linguistic immersion during the hours of these subjects. Resolving doubts about vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation for the children.
Cultural workshops (at the volunteer's free choice): Whenever the volunteer feels like it, he/she can propose different workshops: about his/her culture, cooking, popular dances, etc.
Accompanying foreign children: Sometimes the volunteer may be asked to act as a bridge between teachers and foreign children (as long as they share the same nationality or language as the volunteer) on a linguistic level.
The activity of the volunteers within our volunteer projects will be the support to the teaching in the structure indicated above. The volunteers will support the members of the teaching team in their daily educational work, providing the learning space for the volunteers to learn the Spanish language by putting it into practice during their volunteer activities, and also giving them the space for certain support activities to be carried out in the volunteers' native language, which will gives a great added value for the children of the school and the teachers who will receive the dialogues in a foreign language. The benefit or added value will be mutual, impregnating us with several of the official languages of the European Union.
Volunteers will also participate in workshops, seminars and activities to raise awareness and promote the European Youth Solidarity Corps program in youth organizations, University of Murcia, and any space that generates the option the option to raise awareness of the CES program.
Our volunteering project seeks to promote the values promoted by the EU and the ESC Programme, such as solidarity, equality, justice, respect, fight against exclusion and xenophobia, etc.
FURTHER INFORMATION ABOUT THE VOLUNTEER´S LIVE
Practical arrangements: The schedule of the volunteer activities will be between 30 and 38 hours per week. The volunteer will work max. 38 hours on 5 days per week.
Holidays: According to the rules of ESC, volunteers must have 2 working days off per month.
Accommodation: The volunteers will live in a room in a shared flat located in the city of Cartagena together with other volunteers. The room and the flat will be fully equipped, and electricity, water, gas and internet will be covered by the lead organization (till the amount of 30€ per volunteer).
Pocket money: The volunteer will receive the monthly rate foreseen by the Spanish NA, 186€ per month.
Food: The volunteer will receive 184€ for food every month.
Local transport: Every volunteer will have a chance to choose a bike or bus card provided by the hosting organization if it is needed.
Language support: The volunteer is entitled to receive language support with an online platform, as stated on the ESC programme guide.
Medical insurance: The volunteer will be covered by a private insurance that will cover all the expenses not covered by the public health system (health, accident and civil liability insurance).
Travel costs: The volunteer will receive financial support for travel from his/her country to Spain and from Spain to his/her country once the project is completed, up to a maximum amount established by the European Commission according to the distance band.
Visa and residence permit fees: The volunteer will receive financial support for visa arrangements (if required).
Deposit: The volunteer will have to make a 370€ deposit that will be reimbursed once the project is ended and the volunteer leaves tidy, clean, and with no damage in the private room and common areas, and if the volunteer doesn't leave the project without a justified reason before it ends.
HOW TO APPLY
Anyone interested after reading the info above, fill in the ONLINE APPLICATION FORM and attach their CV and motivation letter (in English or Spanish).
VOLUNTEER PROFILE
This project is aimed at young people between 18 and 30 years old who have not participated in any European volunteering project (EVS or ESC) before. We will give priority to the selection of young people with fewer opportunities.
The selection will be made based on the attitude, the willingness to participate, the motivation and the commitment to the values of the project rather than knowledge and skills of the candidates .
We value the responsibility, the spirit of initiative, the patience and the ability to step back from interpersonal conflicts in order to deal with them more effectively, and the enthusiasm and willingness to participate in the different activities offered.
No young person willing to participate in our project will be excluded for any reason (economic difficulties; social or geographical obstacles; cultural or ideological differences; sexual orientation, age, ethnicity, gender and gender identity, etc.).
ABOUT COLEGIO PEÑAS BLANCAS
The idea of creating the Peñas Blancas school was born in 2012 and 2013. A group of families who know each other from the association Lactando de Cartagena, and who meet in this association to discuss and reflect on many topics about attachment parenting, talked one day about having a school where their children and parents would be calm and comfortable.
From there, a working team was formed, which began to develop the educational project and to look for possible locations for the school.
In the summer of 2014, the first social and non-profit parents' cooperative in the Region of Murcia was formed to manage the school, the Regional Ministry of Education has already approved the Peñas Blancas educational project, and the city council of Cartagena has ceded the facilities of the old public school "Ermita de Tallante", which closed the previous year due to lack of children.
And since the 2014/2015 school year Peñas Blancas has been receiving children who learn through emotion, where they have a great capacity and freedom to decide on their learning process, where this freedom is associated with processes of responsibility, and where the emotional state of the children, teachers and families is taken care of very zealously. And it also has a teaching team in accordance with the aforementioned educational project.
At Peñas Blancas we learn in a different way, and it can be summarized by saying that learning takes place through the harmonious development of the three dimensions that exist in every human being: Thinking, Feeling and Acting.
Curiosity and respect for the pace of individual development, together with an optimal emotional state, are basic for the well-being of children, and an indispensable requirement for them to develop as autonomous, tolerant, empathetic, self-critical human beings, aware of the differences between people and their respect.
Our methodology is active, participatory and collaborative, where children are free to decide about their learning process. And this freedom is indispensably linked to responsibility.
EUROPEAN SOLIDARITY CORPS PROGRAMME (ESC)
As a volunteer, the European Solidarity Corps lets you learn through non-formal experiences, improve existing skills or acquire new ones for your personal, educational or professional development.
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