We have managed to establish a solid partnership with the local Children’s Hospital in  where the volunteers will work for the most part of their time. The volunteers’ main role will be to enhance the medical care offered to the children in the hospital with educational and artistic activities that aim at offering an environment that will support the healing process. Besides all the details specific to any EVS project (the volunteers living together, taking Romanian lessons to facilitate their integration in the community and in the working environment, having the support of a mentor etc.), the most important features of our project (“Bring out the Child in you!”) are:

The project will involve 4 volunteers from 3 different countries (Israel, Italy and Germany) that will work for 10 months in our organization in different activities, mainly in the local Children’s Hospital; the set arrival date for the volunteers is 1^st of may 2010, the volunteers remaining in our organization until the 1^st of march 2011;

The project has as main objective the personal development of the volunteers, including growth in areas such as communication skills, deeper understanding of the concept of mutual acceptance and tolerance, time management skills, planning and organizing events, team-work related skills , creativity and innovation etc; in order to maximize the reaching of this objective every volunteer will have the support of a mentor; the mentor will work together with the volunteer sustaining him/her in establishing and reaching their own learning objectives;

The volunteers will work 4 days a week in the hospital, mostly in the afternoon (from 15.00 to 20.00), in order to prevent their activities from interfering with the medical procedures that usually take place in the first part of the day; the total number of working hours for the volunteer every day is of 6, including the language courses and other type of activities besides working in the hospital; no involvement will be compulsory for the volunteer beyond this limit, any further participation in the activities of the organization being possible only if the volunteer expresses a direct desire for this; the schedule presented in the appendix of this document shows an example of a one-week program that has to be respected by the volunteer; 

The volunteers will work in 4 different sides of the hospital: pediatric surgery and orthopedics, nephrology (here they will work with children dealing with dialysis), pediatric oncology and The Pediatrics Clinic nr. 3 (working with children that have respiratory problems);

The hospital will offer a training session to explain to the volunteers all the details regarding the internal rules applying to them, the specific characteristics of the environment they will be working in, including the characteristics of the medical process in the case of children, presenting all the staff and the facilities offered;  

The volunteers will not substitute the medical staff or be involved in activities that are similar to the medical attention given by doctors or nurses, but will bring something new to what a hospital offers in Romania, that is a series of educational and artistic activities such as: storytelling, English lessons (using the methods specific to the non-formal education), planning different games according to the level of mobility of the patients, organizing musical and drawing activities, learning and practicing the art of origami etc.;

The activities will involve both working with children in groups and individually, aiming at including with priority those children that undergo a long period of hospitalization to diminish the negative effects that this has on children;

Beside all these activities, the volunteers will also be offered the opportunity to offer psychological and practical support to the parents of the children that are patients of the hospital;

The volunteers will need to offer medical certification of their physical and psychological health – all the medical examinations and all the medical tests needed for this purpose will be made in the local clinics;

In order to prevent the work of the volunteers from becoming a boring routine, one day of the week they will work at the office of the Cluj-Napoca Volunteering Centre (the hosting organization), planning and organizing a public event to benefit the Children’s Hospital; the decision of choosing the type of the event will be left to the volunteers: photography exhibition, fundraising event, raising awareness event etc.; according to their own interest they will be able to decide all the details of preparing the event during the hours spent at the office, working under the supervision of the project coordinator;

Some of the administrative aspects relevant for the project include:

The volunteers will be living together in the same apartment; since the living accommodations have not been arranged yet we can not give specific details on them, but we want to prepare the volunteers for the possibility of not having their own room; most probably every volunteer will be sharing the same room with another volunteer from the same project, according to gender; more specific details regarding this aspect will be given as the date of the arrival approaches;

The volunteers will be given a monthly allowance that covers the expenses with the living accommodation and with the food (the volunteers will be responsible for cooking their own food); in addition every month the volunteer will be given a payment that represents the “pocket money” that he/she can spend for other needs besides accommodation and food; 

The schedule of the volunteers include 5 days of activity per week; as a consequence every volunteer has the right to 2 free days every week; beside these, every month every volunteer will have 2 additional days off that he/she will be able to use to visit the surroundings of Cluj-Napoca;

Every volunteer has the right to participate in a training cycle specific to any EVS project: pre-departure training(in the country of residence), on arrival training and mid-term evaluation (both in the hosting country), final evaluation (in the country of residence); 

These would be the most important guidelines of the project “ Bring out the child in you!”. Hopefully you have managed to make an idea of what the project entails from what I have described above.