INFO KIT ECOPOLIS

INFO – KIT EVS PROJECT “ECOPOLIS” The project takes place in Macerata (ITALY), the general aim of the project is that of enforce, valorize and develop the voluntary service meant as motor of the sustainability. The EVS project will involve 4 volunteers coming from different countries (1 from Spain, 1 from France, 1 from Poland and 1 from Portugal), who will be inserted for 11 months, from september 2016 to august 2017, in the context of GRUCA work in the city of Macerata The volunteers involved working closely to GRUCA’s staff and they will have the opportunity to learn according with the methodology of the “learning by doing”. TRAVEL AND ASSURANCE The trips will be organized by the sending organizations which will help the volunteers to find the better way to get to Macerata. The travel tickets will be bought by volunteers and then Gruca onlus give them back the money. Beyond the healthcare assurance card, an other insurance policy will be initiated, the CIGNA for each volunteer. Any visa is requested for the volunteer. ACCOMODATION AND FOOD The municipality agreed to lease free of charge to Gruca some land houses in the historic hamlet Ficana. In one of these houses, Gruca set up a guest house where at least five volunteers can live. Every volunteer have a single room at his own disposal. Furthermore the guest house has a kitchen, a living-room, a room for the laundry and three toilets available. In the matter of food the volunteer will receive on the very beginning of each month 150 euros to manage on one’s own and a basket of biological vegetables to share, every week. Furthermore they will receive 110 euros (pocket money) each month to satisfy their own needs, as decided by the project Erasmus +. In closing the volunteers will be able to move on foot because Ficana is only 15 minutes walk from the inner city. SUPPORT Once arrived the volunteers will be assisted by a tutor during their activities. The tutor is one of the member of the association. He will show the volunteers how the association works and which kind of activities they will develop during their stay in Macerata. The tutor will organize a two month Italian course. The tutor will be their contact person for everything, from their activities to the support they need in every kind of life. These volunteers will have available a mentor too. The mentor will help them in getting to know the town and its possibilities. He will help them in solving some logistic or more practical problems. The mentor is not a member of the association and will create a confidential relationship with them in order to welcome them above all during the very beginning of the period. Through many meetings the mentor aims to find out the problems and doubts of the volunteers in order to solve difficult situations. TASKS The volunteer, according to his skills, helps GRUCA staff in the organization of seminary, workshops and cultural events through non formal educational methods in the Ficana neighbourhood, one of the few examples of the ancient and traditional practice of building in earth or ‘cob’ in Italy. Ficana is an ancient village made of traditional earth buildings on the outskirts of the city of Macerata. Some houses are managed by GRUCA onlus: some of them are apartments for residential use used for EVS accommodation, the others are used like museum of the technical research and practical/professional training in the field of earth construction and associated traditional building methods. During the first two months the volunteers will spend some time to know the association, Ficana museum, and all the projects the members are working for. The volunteers will participate to the activities of the association in order to learn by doing (very important are the practical activities during this period of the project) and to relate to the other members of the staff. The volunteers will gradually get to know other associations and cooperative companies which work for cultural and social activities in the hamlet Ficana and they will have the chance to see how active citizenship works. From the third month on, the volunteers will freely and independently experience the whole of the projects they are involved in, as working for Gruca. The activities are composed of: - support work for the creation of outdoor activities, games, and the construction of recycled material objects with disabled people. - Organisation of children laboratories in the classroom of Ficana land museum. - Support work for the organisation of artistic restoration laboratories or for the use of recycled items in Fontescodella park where the centre of environmental education is settled. - Support work for the management of a biological vegetable garden in the town park Sasso d’Italia. This kind of activity will be managed by a agricultural coordinator, who will teach the volunteers agricultural techniques. The volunteers will irrigate, sow and harvest led by the agricultural agent. - Support work for the organization of the sowing and harvest Fests. Very important events to make the citizens understand the essential of the auto production and the short distribution chain. These two events will take place in Sasso d’Italia park where the citizens will have the chance to taste the vegetables produced and to see the vegetable garden itself. - Preparation of some lessons of environmental education in their own language, which they will give a lecture of in some of the schools of Macerata. - Management of a blog and different social network in which they will show the activities of the association and the development of the projects Ficana museum is involved in. - In the final part of the project each volunteer will have the opportunity to develop his own personal project, contributing with their ideas and experiences to improve GRUCA activities. This project will grow proportionally throughout the months, during which, the volunteers will enjoy a language training to facilitate the communication inside and outside of the organization.