Do you also care about children? Do you believe that every single child has the right to be a child… even if it is sleeping on a piece of cardboard in whichever city in whichever continent? Do you also think that each child – no matter where it is coming from or what colour skin it has, has the right to be a child? Do the lives of street children fascinate you and would you like to learn more about it or do you want to do something for them in a concrete and practical way? Would you like to work individually or do you prefer working within a team with enthusiastic and dynamic like-minded youngsters? Are you interested in joining us on a training weekend, full of activities as well as relaxing moments? If the answer to any of these questions is positive, feel free to read the following brochure. We will guide you through our world of volunteering activities.


What is expected from volunteers and what can volunteers expect from us?

A volunteer is a person who registers at a non profit organisation to aid within a project or projects in her or his free time, without expecting any reimbursement.
Voluntary aid is non-compulsory, meaning that everybody can decide for himself or herself when and how intensively he or she wants to be involved. This flexible attitude can only be successful if open and honest communication exists between the volunteers and members of the non profit organisation Mobile School. Apart from open communication, honesty and trust are highly appreciated. If you take on a task as volunteer, we’ll presume that you will fulfil this task with care and responsibility. If something happens unexpectedly, leaving you with too little time left to fulfil the task you took responsibility for, this is not really a problem, but we expect you to inform us as soon as possible. Don’t hesitate to contact us immediately in this case, as postponing it will have its effects on the efficiency of our projects. If this communicated on time, another person can still finish the task in due time. Every person has his/her personal life, job, responsibilities and we do not expect that you will give full priority to voluntary tasks; the one thing we do expect is unambiguous communication.

Within our organisation, we care a lot about good relationships with our volunteers. For this reason, you can always count on us if you’re feeling like you would need feedback and support. The requirements of the non profit organisation dictate the tasks and responsibilities that can and should be taken care of by the volunteers. Still, we are willing to consider your personal expectations, wishes and needs, but this is only possible through swift and honest communication. Conclusively, don’t forget that volunteers are working for the non profit organisation and not the other way around. If your expectations and needs are too far beyond our global goals, we cannot take them into consideration.


What are typical voluntary tasks? What can I do?

In order to accomplish the goals of Mobile School, we need quite some volunteers, with various and specific background, experience and education. The members of the non profit organisation Mobile School mainly posses knowledge on the target group and the available materials and equipment (technical and educational), but posses limited knowledge in other domains, that are as important for further deployment. Since for each step in the future growth of our global goal we need people and expertise, we created several committees, which are dedicated to various subtasks.


Volunteers in Belgium

Educational committee
This multi-disciplinary team carries the responsibility of the development of new educational materials and equipment for our mobile schools. These volunteers are usually students that want to become school teachers, kindergarten teachers, occupational therapists, psychologists, creative therapists or are creative youngsters linked to scout groups, etc. The main aim of this committee is the development of educational materials within a pleasant and open atmosphere. This committee meets once every month in Leuven for a brainstorming session concerning new educational concepts and methodologies. These ideas are then elaborated and depicted carefully, before they are transferred to the graphical design committee.

Graphical design committee
This team works on the outlining of the panels for educational purposes. The people responsible for graphical design create the required illustrations and are doing this digitally or manually and subsequently scan these drawings. Afterwards these illustrations are fine tuned in e.g. Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop. The final designs are sent off to be printed on plastic panels. The volunteers within the graphical design committee receive their tasks individually from the non profit organisation and they meet when new assignments are made.

IT committee
The IT committee offers the necessary support to the administration department (network, internet, intranet, website,...). They are providing help on individual base when requested by the non profit organisation.

Translators
They provide administrative support (translation of brochures or educational documents to Spanish, French, English, Portuguese, etc.)

Miscellaneous
A large amount of volunteers offers support once in a while during information sessions, our fiesta’s, activities for children, festivals, selling of T-shirts or administrative support.

Regional committees
Apart from Leuven, other regional committees are also active. Due to the growth of the non profit organisation and the need for awareness making towards the problems of street children, it was decided that it would be useful to create regional working groups. These groups can organise activities independently, as long as the main committee is informed on a regular base. This communication is arranged through the appointment of responsible regional contact persons, who send the minutes of meetings to the main committee. Practical arrangements concerning frequency and planning of meetings are left in the hands of the local committees. The main task of all regional committees is to make people aware of the problems of street children and to provide information concerning the projects of Mobile School. The distribution of information occurs in several ways: through the organisation of meeting, events and other aware-making activities. They talk with interested people at fiestas, inform schools about our activities and workshops, distribute newsletters, sell T-shirts, etc.

1) Committee Oost-Vlaanderen
Situated in Gent.

2) Committee Antwerpen
Meetings are organised in Antwerpen.

3) Committee Limburg
These volunteers meet each other in Hasselt.


Volunteers abroad

Mobile School is a non profit project that aims to develop educational materials and equipment for street children. We develop and produce mobile schools for existing organisations in the South. This means that we neither have an office in Latin-America, nor in other continents. We always collaborate with independent organisations that already are dedicated to street children. We do not deliver financial support, no personnel, no structure. We do offer educational equipment to our local partners. This also means that we are not sending individual volunteers to work with the street children at location. This is left to the local inhabitants and they will work with the mobile schools. The main reason for this mode of dealing is that the local people are more familiar with the reality of the street children than we are. We are thus depending on our local partners, who often have their own ways and procedures concerning volunteers.

Still, once in a while there are some volunteers from Mobile School that go abroad. These exemptions are occurring within the framework of the volunteering procedure as depicted below. The final decision is taken by the members of Mobile School and is function of the state-of-the-art situation of the local partners.

1. Volunteers who go abroad on our specific demand have great responsibility and will therefore receive training by Mobile School. Individual volunteers can not apply by sending a motivation letter or curriculum vitae. The non profit organisation selects these volunteers at first hand.

2. Individuals, who are member or are no member of the non profit organisation and who are performing a master thesis or traineeship, are expected to show a broad commitment towards Mobile School. This means that they should get to know the educational possibilities, the global vision and goals of the project Mobile School thoroughly. It is left to them to come with a specific project proposal that can be situated within our global vision and that adds something to reach our goals. We are asking these people to spend at least four months within a partner project, since some time is needed to get acquainted with life on the streets, the target group and the local project. Only then, the work of these individuals will add something extra to the local partner’s organisation and the efforts that were made will pay off. The volunteer should be able to speak the mother tongue of the local partner fluently and should have lucid social skills. These volunteers provide their own financial means and will provide us a copy of their identity card, tickets, insurance, etc. The non profit organisation will stay in contact with these volunteers and will assist them for the duration of their stay. The non profit organisation Mobile School has the right to accept or decline proposals for traineeships. Those volunteers, who were already active within our organisation and thus obtained thorough background on our vision, material, equipment, means and who already showed their commitment for our project will obtain priority.

3. A third group of volunteers comprises those people who are linked to a school or other organisation and would like to cooperate with Mobile School (research, advertisement of our project, etc.). These people are only linked implicitly to Mobile School and will thus not be put in contact with one of our local partners through the non profit organisation. They will also provide their own financial means by other ways.


Traineeships

There are some possibilities to fulfil a traineeship at the non profit organisation Mobile School. Unfortunately, time and space are limited in which we can offer proper mentoring. For this reason we only allow three traineeships per year. The prospects are function of the background, education, particular undertaking and level of independency of the trainees. Within a first evaluation sequence, we will discuss the goal and practical arrangements together (region, mentoring, etc.). It is of great importance that requests for traineeships are well-prepared and this as soon as possible, since the acceptance of traineeships is usually decided upon long before the actual activity.


Practical arrangements

Volunteers that attend activities of Mobile School will automatically be contracted insurance during our activities.

If volunteers are fulfilling responsibilities on specific request of the non-profit organisation and if it was agreed upon on beforehand, transportation costs will be reimbursed. Transportation costs to and from common meetings, activities, or events are not reimbursed.


How can I join?

After you have read our brochure thoroughly, you can fill out following registration document carefully, sign it and send it to the non profit organisation Mobile School. Please mention very precisely how you would like to participate and engage. Based on these data we fill out our database and we will inform you on our meetings, activities and the everyday trivia of Mobile School. The collected personal data will be used for internal purposes of informing our volunteers about our activities only. We do not collect, use or process any personal data beyond this extent.

It is of major importance that volunteers receive up-to-date information about the specific goals and practical arrangements of the non profit organisation Mobile School. It would therefore be very beneficial if volunteers could attend information or training meetings regularly. Many of these meetings are organised during the weekend.

The voluntary forum offers an interesting platform for discussions and information on specific subjects, but also for informal communications. Once you did register, you will receive an invitation fort this forum.

Furthermore, we would like to advise you to participate as much as possible to our activities and meetings to stay informed about the newest ideas and projects. In case you have questions or comments, feel free to contact the coordinator of the voluntary committee at info@mobileschool.org.

You can download the brochure and registration document (en Dutch) here. The registration document can be found here.