The idea

A volunteer once said, that EVS is giving him two opportunities: The experience of living and working abroad in a new culture, and second, the opportunity to start a new life, when he is coming back.

As volunteers come closer to the end of their voluntary service, they often face a lot of questions: What did I achieve? What will I take home? What did I learn? Will this experience help me in my future? How can I use this experience? Will I loose everything I gained when I come back home? What will I do afterwards? How will my life be like? How did my project changed me as a person? And how does this effect my future?

In the sequence of EVS training courses, the usual moment such questions pop up is the Mid-Term Meeting. Last year, the expectations to share visions, plans, hopes and fears about one’s own future grew enormously. This became especially obvious with the end of the Future Capital programme. If we now look back, it seems, that the Future Capital programme may has covered (or helped avoiding) facing these questions. A volunteer could perceive his/her future still well protected by the EU, because the time after his/her voluntary service is still followed up by another programme. Thanks to the end of the Future Capital programme, volunteers have to take the responsibility to define next steps for their own future.

At first, we experienced the lack of Future Capital as a gap in our Mid-Term Meetings, only later we saw the potential of a new space to work on the future and the personal development of volunteers. At this point, we look for approaches and tools, attitudes and styles of working to support and empower volunteers to define their next steps for their own future.