Volontariato europeo ESC in Polonia!

Da dicembre 2021/gennaio 2022 a settembre 2022 

Bona Fides Association

Main activities include community building and organizing, ecological tasks and working with people with disabilities.

Katowice Community Building and Organizing

• Research the national composition of the society in Katowice, collection of contacts of local foreigners.
• Identification of the areas that are more populated with foreigners in the city and research for interested local inhabitants of those areas (Polish and other cultures) to create a group to investigate relevant issues connected to that zone.
• Organization of meetings with local groups to discuss issues, improvements that may be done in their neighborhoods, ideas of events and others, set clear short-term and long-term goals with the group.
• Identification of relevant issues concerning vulnerable groups (seniors, minorities, people with disabilities, etc).
• Organization of meetings with local authorities to present ideas, request for improvements and changes and discuss with them the possibility to act for the benefit of the local community (accompanied by one of the members of our Association).
• Research on local, regional, national NGOs working for local people, including foreigners, to build new partnership and cooperation and explore further possibilities of intervention.
• Conduction of interviews with locals and collection of petitions to propose relevant changes in specific areas of the city.
• Organization of local campaigns to take collective actions involving locals to encourage active engagement and local sensitization (cleaning actions, workshops for competencies exchange, etc).
• Organization of the “Cultural Year” of Katowice: the volunteers will launch the idea of the dedicating one week a month or every two months to a different culture, and organize the cultural week (with national food, games, dances, events hold in Bona Fides and/or in the market square, if possible) to raise awareness on the variety of cultures in the city and create room for each of them to express their beauty and peculiarities.
• Organization of language exchanges in the city, to give the possibility to those willing to learn to meet and dedicate their time to learn a new language (organization of groups to meet and talk and\or tandem).

Healthification and Beautification of Katowice

Speaking of healthy, clean and eco-friendly cities in Europe, Katowice is a quite bad example. Topics related to the protection and preservation haven’t developed responsible behavior nor environmental friendly approaches. In this negative scenario, we hope to start bringing up change to sensitize people on the need for personal and community action.

The tasks in which our volunteers will be involved are:

• Cleaning initiatives in public spaces and building up groups of local people that may be active for the environmental benefit of the community. Among these initiatives, we aim to implement trash and litter collection, beautification initiatives (cleaning up of parks, streets, squares), and lake cleanups. Our participants will recruit local volunteers, promote the initiative, lead the teams of interested local people, divide the tasks, collect ideas, set up the calendar of the activities, take pictures and post on social networks.
• Organization of workshops in local schools and libraries for kids, students, seniors and in general local people about different topics such as healthy diets and foods, home planting and gardening, consequences of pollution, recycling, climate change and affection, environmental practices, harmless tourism, alternative energy resources and energy saving, etc.
• Implementation of the “Eat healthy” video program, where our volunteers will go to supermarkets to analyze the content of food products (brand recognition possibly excluded), such as the quantity of sugar, chemical elements, food process, refined flours, sodium, etc. The volunteers will be free to conduct these videos the way the like the most, we’ll suggest them effective digital tools they could use to reach more visibility and increase the number of followers (such as our Facebook and Instagram pages, YouTube channel or applications like Twitch, that is the world’s leading live streaming platform for gamers and speeches). The initiative will be also supported by the possibility of conducting podcasts at Bona Fides’ professional radio set.
• Research places offering healthy food, vegetarian and vegan products, and healthy options on the menus.
• Organize sport and game events at local level (such as marathons, treasure hunts, city game…) to spread good sport practices and as a visibility tool to attract people’s attention on environmental issues and healthier lifestyles.
• Organize “healthy excursions” with and for local people to explore the green places of the Silesian region and contribute integrating people of all ages and provenience.

Sensorial inclusive city Campaign

The idea of this activity derives from our inclusive approach to fight all barriers that are still present in Katowice and in Silesia. The base of this idea was born from the need for intervention identified during a long process of research and
action that, in 2017-2019, led us to monitor the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 54 public administration units in our region and to the implementation of the “Silesian Voivodeship friendly to people with sensory disabilities” in 2019-2021, consisting in a series of training courses for local authorities and officers together with the monitoring of buildings and public spaces in 36 provinces and cities.

The tasks in which our volunteers will be involved are:

• Organize inclusive events involving people with fewer opportunities and local people not facing barriers, to foster inclusion and mutual understanding (chess tournament, theater improvisation, music concerts, karaoke, etc.).
• Assistance to the informal group of people with sensorial disabilities in their participation in social events: the group of people with which Bona Fides cooperates wants to be active in trips, excursions, events, parties. Unfortunately some of them are not fully independent, even with all tools they have at their disposal. They need someone assisting them, therefore Bona Fides’ members accompany them in their initiatives and we would like our volunteers to join us and the group and learn how to assist them in their needs and enjoy their company and time spent together. The activities we want to plan with them are: tree planting in the forest surrounding Katowice, kayak excursions, walks in parks and many others.
• Organize “talent shows” and workshops to gather people of any social condition and facing different kinds of barriers to share the talents they have. This task is based on the belief that every person, no matter which barrier s\he may face, has skills, talents, passions that s\he may want to share with other people. The message we want to share is an encouraging message for all those people facing daily barriers in their life. We want them not to give up, stay positive and focus on the things they can do, not on the ones they can’t. We work to enable them to “be able to be able”.
• Organize a photo exhibition about the concept of “barriers”, “obstacles”, “accessibility” and “inaccessibility” to sensitize people commonly not facing any problem in the city about all the difficulties we generally don’t see, but that are huge obstacles for our people with fewer opportunities. The concept of barrier is different for every person: a place that is accessible to a person with motor disability isn’t necessarily accessible to a person with motor or mental disability. We need people to understand that every disability implies a certain kind of barrier and a specific need for accessibility.
• Organize one simulation of sensory and motor barriers to sensitize people about the kind of obstacles people with disabilities face daily in the city (mobility, sound, visual obstacles).
• Cooperation and support to local institutions dealing with kids and adolescents with mental and physical disabilities and coming from difficult social and economic backgrounds. Our volunteers will support these kids in some of their activities and English homework and organize little parties/national days for them.
• Provide English lessons for people with fewer opportunities (seniors, people with physical disabilities.
• Provide computer or other digital tools lessons for people with fewer opportunities.
• Create a digital interactive map for people with sensory and motor disabilities.

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