CEMEA de BOURGOGNE FRANCHE-COMTE

description of organisation

CEMEA are a regional structure established in Bourgogne-Franche-Comte since 1944. Officially recognised as a nonprofit organisation they developped partnership with the public school and are entitled to be a training organism by the Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sport and by the Ministry of National Education. The ten member team and the 150 volunteers is composed of hands-on practitioners (teachers, caseworkers, trainers, doctors, development directors) in order to lead successful activities. Ceméa intend to spread a militant goal through all their activities : the diffusion and the experience of the values of the New Education movement inspired by great pedagogues (such as Montessori, Freinet, Merieux, Cousinet, De Failly). Our main way of action is the training of youth workers, teachers and all professionnals involved in education issues.

The Centres d’entrainement aux méthodes d’éducation active (Ceméa) -Training center of methods of active education - are a mouvement of education attentive to the developpement of the persons in their globality. New education that Ceméa promote, relies on the experience and the expression of the persons and is build in a tight contact between paractice and theory.
The Ceméa thinks that training is the main way of action to empower citizenship and allow people to transform themselves, their environement and institutions.
The trainers of the association, all activists of new education, work to open various spaces. Spaces of training, experimentation, reflexion for all public (children, parents, professionals, all public) about education ; cultural education, media education, intercultural education, laicity, fight against any kind of discrimination, hollidays, leisure time, social issues…
New education places the « Activity » in the center of their trainings and is the base of a collective reflexion afterwards.
For example, in our trainings for youth workers, we are not explaining how to leed activities with a public ; We practice (manual activities, expression, debates, scientific experimentation, reflexion, museum visiting, stop motion, wood activities, paper, plaster, photography, cooking, pupets…) and then we see how eachone would use that kind of activity, why, how to adapt it to his/her public.
An other example in intercultural education, we first work with personnal experience of the persons, their own representation and stereotypes and then we build together a reflexion about where does they come from, why, the mecanisms participating to their construction and their consequences.
Acompanying young people in local and international volunteering is an oportunity for us to open a space of non-formal eduaction and a space of intercultural education for all the young people. International volunteering participate to intercomprehension, to breake stereotypes, to gain social skills and give the possibility to be involved in active and collective solidarity. Through our commitment in this programm, we promote volunteering as a tool for all people of civil society to act with others in the construction of a european and international citizenship.

The CEMEA will give the volunteers the opportunity to understand the values of New Education movement and to live an intercultural approach through different kinds of activities :
*organisation of cultural events
*Animation for various publics (children, adluts, ald people)
*promotion of EVS by presenting their volunteering experience, participation to the pre-departure trainings of the french volunteers, intercultural trainings organised by Ceméa.
*Creation, organisation and realisation of one or several personal projects according to the volunteer skills. The project will have to fit with the Ceméa's fields of action and will give the volunteers the opportunity to develop their spirit of initiative. The project should mix the publics of the different associations implicated in the project of recieving EVS.
*Participation to the association group life along with the other militants (preparation of the equipment for the trainings, pedagogical meetings, thematic activities, following trainings, at least BAFA 1 training )
*Webmaster activities to develop digital skills (creation of flyers and brochures, newsletter writing, updating the association website)

Volunteering project