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Supporting disabled young people in Samara
Start date: Jan 1, 2015, End date: Oct 31, 2015 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The project involved one participant from Hungary, who undertook his service in a partner country, Russia, during half a year. The project engaging in long-term voluntary service aimed at achieving the following objectives: • International volunteer works with the organisation to help establish international contacts and share knowledge about disability-related issues in other countries • The services that the international volunteer provides to disabled people will contribute to their informal education and intercultural learning and to forming their moral values. • The volunteer’s activity will be of great importance in assisting families that bring up disabled children. • His involvement in the activities of the organisation will promote the idea of volunteerism in the social field among (young) people in the Samara Region, which will hopefully result in inspiring them to do voluntary work in the Organisation. The “support service for disabled children” was planned by “Parus Nadezhdy” long ago and could be implemented only with volunteers’ help. Disabled children do not have the opportunity to communicate with each other or attend the organisation’s activities without the support of a volunteer from “ParusNadezhdy”. Since these children have to stay at home alone, isolated from society while their parents are at work, visiting these children, organizing their leisure time, involving them in the organisation’s activities, giving them physical and moral support can be a huge support and empowerment for them. The above mentioned activities and aims were the main goals of the volunteer. Working with people with fewer opportunities and special needs was a demanding task from all the actors in the project, but especially for the volunteer. The volunteer had some prior experience with disabled people, but for him the situation in Samara was still a new and very challenging one. Being positive and open-minded, he succeded in enganging the target group in a learning process visiting them regularly and lifting the burden from the parents' shoulder for a while. It was a physically hard work that required a lot of patience and tolerence. The volunteer learnt about the life of disabled people in Russia and had the opportunity to see it every day. Since the host organisation is in cooperation with other NGOs in Samara, the volunteer could do networking with local young people and other EVS volunteers to exchange their experience and plan new initiatives together. The volunteer became also familiar with the disabled people’s rights in Russia and promoted an inclusive program. The volunteer obtained a range of special practical skills like taking care of disabled children, assisting them during meals and walks, organising day-to-day activities for them, teaching, playing together, etc. The volunteer shared his experiences and impressions with other volunteers and both with the sending and host organisations during regular meetings. This project gave the volunteer an opportunity also to learn a lot about his host country’s culture, traditions and way of life,as well as to share it with foreign people and engage in intercultural dialogue. Since the volunteer had already an intermediate level of Russian language knowledge, with the additional language support in the beginning of his service helped him to investigate new approaches in working with disabled children, as well as to represent another culture, and to be able also to discover things about themselves, as a personal learning process. During his service he learnt about the Russian culture by socialising in the local community, understanding their way of life, history, etc that are never shown to foreigners in another situation. The volunteer had an in-depth knowledge about working with disabled people and he also had his own mini-project initiatives that he realised with the support of the local volunteers and staff. He frequently reported on his activities, which was published on the website and in the social media, as well. Therefore, having returned, he brought valuable experience to his sending organisation and further ideas and conrete initiatives for future projects.

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