Beskrivelse af organisationen

Elva Opened Youth Center is subordinate establishment of Elva City Local Government. Elva Opened Youth Center works on the principle of an open youth center. Elva Open Youth Center is opened from 8th of March 2004 by Elva Hobby and Cultural Centre Sinilind initiative. Elva Open Youth Center is coordinating youth work in Elva city. There are approximately 1200 citizens in the age 7-26 in Elva. There is one general education school, Elva High School, in the city with 807 student in the age 7-18.

We are cooperating with other youth centers and youth organisations on local, regional, national and on international level. We are covering all 8 youth work areas with our activities, from special youth work to youth participation. We are coordinating youth work in Elva, involving also local organisations and institutions, like Elva High School, Elva Orphanage, Elva Football Club and many others.

Elva Open Youth Center is located in renovated building, which was previously sauna house. Youth center is located near to the lake and train station, downtown is 10- minutes walking distance. We moved to this house on 2014. On the first floor there are photographer studio, hairdresser and youth hobby classes (animation, ceramic and art hobby classes). On the second floor there is youth center and dance hall with dressing room and shower room. Youth center have 4 different rooms - small office room; room with three computer, table football game and air hockey; bigger room with billiard; kitchen room with TV and playstation and WII game.

Elva Hobby and Cultural Centre Sinilind is located in the separate house, near to the youth centre. Sinilind have cinema and concert hall, office rooms and one room for hobby classes. Sinilind was built in 1986 as cinema house. 1993 cinema was merged with Elva cultural house and until today Sinilind is still showing screenings. There are also theatrical performances, concerts, youth amateur theatre festival, youth song contests and many other cultural events taking place in Sinilind.

Elva Opened Youth Center is opened from Monday to Friday from 13.00 until 18.00 and there are two youth workers working in the youth center. Sometimes there are youth events on the weekend. Our youth center is visited by youngsters in age 7-19, mainly in age 7-11. In youth center youngsters can play with computers and with playstation, play table games, play billiard and communicate with youth workers. There is also group of youngsters who are voluntarily organizing and helping different events in youth center and/or outside of the youth center. Youth worker invites the group together, if there are some event coming. The information about Elva Youth Center is up in internet on webpage http://elva.kovtp.ee/noortekeskus-teave and in Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Elva-Noortekeskus-297857846893794/?fref=ts

Our regular activities are: opened youth center coordination, international youth exchanges, youth initiative support, youth council support and coordination, youth camps, allowing voluntary activities to youngsters, organizing 1st June as Children Protection Day event etc. We are also involved to different city-wides cultural events management (Father´s Day event, Amateurs Theatre Festival etc).

Volunteer will work mainly in Elva Open Youth Center, organizing activities in the youth center open area and helping hobby classes teachers. Because Elva is small city and we are cooperating with other local organisation, volunteer have possibility to organize some events (workshops, cultural evenings) in Elva High School, Elva Orphanage and in Elva Cultural and Hobby Centre Sinilind. If volunteer have interest and competent on sport, then she/he have possibility to be assistant coach for youngsters in football club FC Elva.

We expect that volunteer will enrich youth center open area activities with her/his competences and skills. Volunteer will be involved also to hobby classes, as assistent teacher. It depends from volunteer passionates and hobbies, in which hobby classes she/he will be volunteering. There are next hobby classes in Elva for youngsters: dance, guitar , music, equipment, art, acting, animation, ceramics, drum lessons and many more. Volunteer will be involved also to Elva Hobby and Cultural Centre work, if there are help needed for concert, movie night or theatre show to sell tickets or do something else.

Leading different activities and communicating with youngsters will develop also volunteer and she/he will get valuable experience about her/his competences, knowledges and skills. We have some examples what we are expecting from volunteer, but the concrete tasks will be settled up with volunteer and supervisor on the basis of volunteer competences and interests:
- intercultural learning activities (cultural evenings, cookings and language lessons in youth center);
- organized activities in the youth center open area (workshops in different topics - film, art, craft, adventure games, IT, acting);
- documentary movie club coordination in youth center;
- trainings for youngsters (project writing, project coordination etc);
- writing blog posts about her/his activities to youth center blog;
- helping hobby classes teacher (dance, ceramics, animation, football);
- organizing outdoor activities (due to proximity of nature, there is possibility for non-formal outdoor activities like hiking, adventure games etc).

To support volunteer learning experience volunteer will have supervisor, with who volunteer will describe her/his goals and make a plan how to reach to them. In every two weeks they will have meeting where they will read over these goals and if volunteer needs any help with preparation, supervisor will be there for her/his. Supervisor will use motivational interwieving method that will help top analyze volunteer learning experience. Supervisor will suggest different hand-books about youth work and non-formal methods, that are EVS project main topics. We will send our volunteer to on-arrival and mid-term training that are organized by Agency for Erasmus+: YiA.