LOCAL COMMUNITY
The EVS-participant would be living in Övertorneå municipality (kommun), in the village of Juoksengi close to the office of our employee.
Övertorneå municipality is one of the small municipalities in the inland of Norrbotten county. The amount of inhabitants is 5.092 (31:th of December 2007) of which about 2000 live in the main village, Övertorneå. Juoksengi is the second largest village in the municipality with 500 inhabitants, situated on the bank of Torne River and on the boarder to Finland. One spectacular thing with Juoksengi is that it is situated exactly on the Arctic Circle. This of course means that we have midnight sun in the mid of summer and midwinter darkness in the mid of winter, in reality there is not very much of darkness due to the snow in the wintertime. In the summertime we have about two months with bright nights.
Juoksengi is about 200 km from the main city in Norrbotten County, Luleå and about 130 km from the main city in Finnish Lapland, Rovaniemi. The transportation time to these large cities is about 4 hours with bus and about 2,5 hours with car.
The climate in the area is an ordinary climate for north European conditions; we have real summer in June, July and August. The winter season is from November to March. Between these we have an awesome autumn with most years the beautiful autumn-colors typical to north of Europe and a springtime with white snows and sunshine with excellent possibilities for cross-country skiing. For downhill skiing there is also good possibilities, just about 10 km from Juoksengi we have the biggest slope for downhill skiing in the whole area of eastern part of Norrbotten County.
Lot of the activities possible to do in this area are connected to the gifts of nature; picking berries, hiking, canoeing, biking etc. But of course there are also possibilities for cultural activities; singing in chorus, dancing, taking part in study circles around cultural interests or even taking part in acting in local theatre groups. In Övertorneå there is a cinema, library and local cafés where to meet young people.
One main advantage we have to tell about this municipality; all bus transportations in the whole municipality are for free. This will make it very easy for a person living in Juoksengi to come to Övertorneå and other villages around.
Depending on how the volunteer wants to live; he/she will have an apartment or a room in the house of a family.
During the project our employee will be the supervisor for the volunteer, and they will work in his office with different types of tasks. Depending of the age of the volunteer, he/she would mainly participate in the work of our employee if he/she is very young. If the person is older we will also provide tasks, which would not be done otherwise, naturally with supervision of our employee.
The work will also include some travelling in the region to meet our members in their work in the local groups. There might also be some meetings with authorities and companies we have been co-operating with.
SERVICE AND LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
We have members with good knowledge in different types of environmental questions and with experience of how to influence the public. The EVS-volunteer will meet people who have a lot to share. He/she will also have the possibility to study a course at Övertorneå folkhögskola (folk high-school) if he/she wants to learn something about the Swedish society or culture.
The project offers the volunteer a possibility to se how a non-governmental organisation works with different kind of projects. How an organisation could be built on three levels, local, regional and national level and work with the same questions at all levels in different ways.
When there will be inventories in old growth forests or just plain excursions the volunteer will get a very good picture of the landscape in the county. This will give opportunities for the volunteer to learn lot of ecology, flora, wildlife and geology in many places in Norrbotten County.
When presenting information to others in the organisation through presentations or lectures and to plan, carry out and evaluate projects, he/she will, depending on his/her skills and ambitions, get an informal learning that gains his/hers personal development.
We think that the volunteer during his/her stay in the local community will get a very good view of culture and nature in this area. The area where Juoksengi is situated is called Tornedalen, Torne river valley, and is very well known for its nature and cultural heritage. This bilingual area, or actually trilingual differs in many cultural aspects from other parts of Sweden, mainly due to the live spoken languages in the area: Swedish, Finnish and Meän kieli.
We also think that the volunteer will get a insight in the culture around the whole of Norrbotten county through meeting people from our local organisations.
The volunteer's contact with the local society will also gain an informal process of learning. He/she will get to understand how a society with the above mentioned conditions function in every day life.
ROLE OF THE EVS VOLUNTEER
The volunteer will be a part of our daily work in our office. He/she will see how our organisation works and he/she will have a possibility to influence us with his/her own experience and culture.
The volunteer will get advice and supervision from our employee, but also be free to take own decisions regarding the work. He/she will be able to take part in board meetings with the board for Naturskyddsföreningen i Norrbottens län, whenever the board invites the employee to take part.
When local groups have meetings and organize courses the volunteer can take part in them. Depending on the aim of the meeting the volunteer can participate as a participant or even as an organizer or a lecturer.
Important is that the volunteer must feel himself/herself comfortable in the role and situation.
We want the volunteer to feel welcome in all parts of the organisational work so he/she will get out the maximum of the time as a volunteer.
ACTIVITIES FOR THE VOLUNTEER
An important task for our employee is to talk with and meet our members; he coordinates activities in different local groups in the region. This will be a part of the daily work, to write emails to all active members about something that will happen, for example a lecture about traffic in cities in Luleå Tuesday 9 pm. Or to phone a group or person working with consumption habits among the public, and ask how is it going, do they need some kind of support to be able to do what they are doing. Our coordinator also visits us and tries to pick up ideas of what we need to be able to work successfully. When he knows what our needs are he provides help in one way or another. Sometimes he finds a person who could have a lecture for all interested and arranges the happening, sometimes he orders some books needed in an activity. There is a big variety in his tasks.
All this above could be a part of an EVS-volunteers daily work. The volunteer could also work more independently with arranging a happening/course of something that our members need or things that he/she believes would be interesting for our younger members. To create a meeting point for all youth in our organisation would be a good example of a project that we have not done (but should do) because of lack of time.
Depending on the skills and interests of the volunteer he/she can also be part in organizing outdoor activities like excursions and inventories whenever that might be planned in local groups or by Naturskyddsföreningen i Norrbottens län.
Mostly those kinds of activities are made during the snow free period of the year.
As the work varies very much depending on what is going on, it is not easy to make a day-to-day schedule. But we try here to make a possible week that could actually happen.
In this weekly schedule we assume that the volunteer will work together with the employee.
Monday:
Day off due to meeting during weekend.
Tuesday:
9-12 Planning for the course about old growth forest that will be in two weeks time in Arvidsjaur.
12-13 Lunch
13-17 Emails and checking up with participants for the course about old growth forest in Arvidsjaur.
Wednesday:
9-12 Free time due to meeting in evening
12-13 Lunch
13-17 Preparation for meeting in evening. What will happen? What role does the volunteer have in the meeting?
17-18 Dinner
18.30-20 Meeting with the local board in Övertorneå.
Thursday:
9-12 Emails, telephone calls. Discussion about the board meeting the day before. Something we have to do after that meeting?
12-13 Lunch
13-17 Preparations for the meeting in Luleå.
Friday:
9-11 Preparations for the meeting in Luleå.
11-16 Travel with bus to Luleå together with the employee.
Free time in Luleå
Saturday:
9-15 Ordinary meeting with the board for Naturskyddsföreningen i Norrbottens län in Luleå.
Time to discuss with the board members about volunteers work.
Free time in Luleå.
Sunday:
Free time in Luleå.
VOLUNTEER PROFILE AND RECRUITMENT PROCESS
Since we work with the environment and conservation the volunteer most be interested in these questions. It is positive if the person has some basic knowledge of the Swedish language or is interested in learning it. The person needs to know English to be able to communicate with us.
We assume that the volunteer who is interested in an environmental project is in someway in contact with a sending organisation with similar subject area that ours. We have already contacts with environmental organisations (directly of indirectly) in other European countries that we hope will gain in the process of finding someone interested in our projects.
Interested volunteers that make contact with us without having a sending organisation we will try to guide to some sending organisation we have had contacts with.
RISK PREVENTION
The EVS-volunteer will be under the supervision of our employee who will support him/her daily. He lives in the same village our office is located in and where the volunteer will live. A younger participant will be living in a family and meet our employee at the office daily. The participant will also have the opportunity to contact the board of our organisation if something unexpected happens and he/she feels that it is difficult to talk with our employee.
For younger participants the family hosting the volunteer will be important. We will inform them about the kind of difficulties a young person might stand in front of; cultural shock, longing for home, lack of friends, cultural differences etc. The hosting family can in this way act as a conversational partner in daily life.
Older participants that chose to have their own apartment/living will have this contact with our employee and our board. In the board there will be a person that will act as a contact with the volunteer. We have also a board member (the chairman) that earlier has been working with international youth exchange through an other organisation (CIU) and we think this will be a good advantage for preventing risks and crisis.
In the beginning we will arrange a meeting with the board, our employee and the EVS-volunteer. During this meeting we will inform about who and how he/she can contact our board, and we will try to get to know each other to provide a good contact and atmosphere.
The life in a small municipality like Övertorneå differs from life in big towns. Still, in the municipality of Övertorneå there is an active cultural life compared to many other municipalities in Sweden. That will be one possibility for a young person to feel at home and to have relations with other people than those he/she works with. It will also be possible to meet other young people through activities arranged by sport clubs, cultural organisations and also the youth recreation centre in Övertorneå. As there are free buses in the whole municipality it is easy to go to other villages without cost.
In this kind of municipality there is also a society that takes care of people in a positive way. People are open to meet strangers and it is easy to get contact and feel safe in the society.
If there is a need to make a recreational trip to a bigger town (Luleå) to take part in activities, it is very easy to arrange. There are buses every day and also there are people from the village going there. |
The aim of our organisation is to work with all kind of nature conservation and other threats against the environment, and to inform the public of the situation in these questions. We work at the regional level and co-operate with local groups in the region.
In Norrbotten that covers about 25% of the area of Sweden, we have 13 local groups, some of them not so active. We have more than 3000 members in these groups (3.114 members the 31:th of December 2007).
Some of the tasks we have been working with during the last years are:
- making a regional inventory of old growth forests in the region and co-operate with different organisations (both authorities and logging companies) to protect valuable forests from logging,
- co-operation with the authority working with water conservation,
- global warming, where we have done campaigning towards public and politicians and also had courses about global warming
- consumption habits among the public, in Swedish called "Handla Miljövänligt" (Act/buy environmentally sound) where we inform and encourage public to make environmentally good decisions when making their daily shopping.
Activities in the local groups differ due to amount of active members, but mostly the activities are similar to the one performed in the regional organisation. There are working groups working with forest issues, with consumption habits and with global warming. Most of the groups also have excursions and lectures around issues dealing with nature and environment.
The main target groups for activities in Naturskyddsföreningen i Norrbottens län are three:
1) Our local groups and their members
2) The public living in the county of Norrbotten
3) Politicians and decision makers in the county of Norrbotten
Naturskyddsföreningen i Norrbottens län has a board with at this moment ten (10) persons. All persons in the board work on voluntary basis. The board has about six meetings during the year and between the meetings the board members work with ordinary tasks concerning work in a board of this kind; contacts with members and people on both the local and national level, answering questions from the public, preparing letters, answering questions from and preparing statements to the mass medium.
We have one person employed working with coordination of different projects in the local groups. He is also working with activities arranged by us, as an example a course about global warming for members and others interested in the question. |
