ESC: Join ESC TEAMS @ Yiddish Summer Weimar!

Name: ESC: Join ESC TEAMS @ Yiddish Summer Weimar!
Start: 2026-07-29
End: 2026-08-17
Location: Weimar, Germany

Code: 5097869e251864e889 Copied

Germany Culture European Voluntary Service Culture European Voluntary Service Fixed dates

About the project

📝 Detailed information

🏢 About the local organisation

The Other Music Academy [OMA] is an experimental sociocultural center in Weimar. Its projects are always interdisciplinary, intercultural and hands-on, harnessing artistic and scientific practices to realize socially empowering goals. The OMA invites a very wide diversity of people into meaningful, genuine encounters – through music, dance, crafts, cultural history and more - aimed at overcoming divisive boundaries and biases and developing our cooperative human potential. The OMA has its home in an old school building, where it hosts the OMA café, ateliers, workshops and projects. Its main ongoing projects include Yiddish Summer Weimar, #openpavillon, the OMA Improvisation Project, the Middle Eastern Music & Cultures Project, and the Cabaret Workshop, among others. (Please see www.othermusicacademy.eu) The OMA is our vision of a new kind of institution: An Empowerment Center. To us, “empowerment” means to develop and strengthen the human potential for autonomy, creativity, efficacy, and social connection.That goal requires us to understand and overcome the many prejudices and structures whose aim is to disempower some of us, and which, in the end, disempower all of us. The long-term goal of the OMA is an open, inclusive society in which the most diverse kinds of people participate actively in the design and realization of their shared cultures. HOW DOES THE OMA WORK? What makes our way of working special is our concept of an “OMA-Project.” OMA-Projects are above all hands-on and practical. They provide a structure for all kinds of people to come together to achieve a goal that they design together. Every OMA-Project is guided from the start by diversity, cooperation and empowerment as values. A project is successful only if every participant gains new skills and practical knowledge while connecting people who might otherwise never meet. MAJOR OMA PROJECTS Some of our ongoing, major OMA projects include: Yiddish Summer Weimar (YSW), an annual summer institute and festival that explores Yiddish culture from a transcultural, historical and contemporary point of view. Led by a team of internationally respected artists and scholars, YSW takes intangible heritage and aural transmission as starting points for exploring questions of identity through immersive, holistic learning. Since 1998, more than 10,000 participants have learned about Yiddish and related song, instrumental music and dance traditions as well as the Yiddish language in YSW workshops, and more than 100,000 people have attended its concerts, jam sessions and numerous other public events. /// www.yiddishsummer.eu The OMA Improvisation Project, a platform for artists and scientists to research and and present new approaches to improvisation in music, dance and other performance arts. /// www.othermusicacademy.eu/improv The #openpavillon, an open-ended, socio-cultural construction site where arts and crafts meet. A highly diverse community develops methods for co-creation and projects involving building things together. #openpavillon and its sociocultural workshop-festival “Altenburg by the Sea” have been nominated for the 2021 federal Innovation Prize for Socioculture in the category Sustainability. /// www.openpavillon.eu The Caravan Orchestra & Choir, winner of the 2018 Shimon Peres Prize, is an exchange project between Yiddish Summer Weimar, the University of Haifa and the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar. 30-45 young, culturally diverse musicians attend an annual 2-3 week residency in Haifa and Weimar to rehearse and perform concerts in a social/educational framework. /// www.caravanorchestra.eu

💼 What the programme involves

Yiddish Summer Weimar (YSW) is one of the world’s most important and most inclusive Yiddish culture festivals, where traditional and contemporary Yiddish culture is taught, developed, and shared with the public. Each year, an international community of artists, musicians & workshop participants gather at the festival to experience and shape Yiddish culture in workshops, jam sessions, and concerts. One of the goals of Yiddish Summer Weimar is to make Yiddish culture more visible and to give people from all over the world the opportunity to experience it and develop it further. With this year’s theme we celebrate Yiddish Wo:men and their creative work throughout centuries! This summer we organize a team activity during the YSW (yiddishsummer.eu) from July 29 to August 17 (this includes travel days) for a team of 14 volunteers. Come support our intercultural festival in different areas with various tasks (workshops & event support, awareness work, cleaning etc.)!

🏠 Accommodation on site

You'll be responsible for planing and booking your travels to Weimar - we will support you and give you very useful advice on how to do that. We will reimburse your travel costs as well as provide you with a free accommodation in shared rooms (in a cute hostel in the city center, 3-4 persons per room). In Weimar we will pick you up from the train station. On most days, we’ll serve a free vegetarian and vegan lunch buffet. We also provide free coffee, tea and water. You’ll need to organize your other meals. You will receive a small food allowance as well as 7€ pocket money per day.

🎒 Leisure activities

After your registration, if selected, we will reach out to you and invite you to an online interview to get to know you better, tell you about the activity and answer your questions. Before your arrival in Weimar we will provide you with the ESC Volunteering Infopack and invite you to our online awareness training. In Weimar we will conduct regular team meetings and feedback sessions, as well as mentoring sessions on how to make best use of your Youth Pass certificate. For each task area there are expert team leaders to guide you and provide all the information you need.

⚠️ Requirements

The Participant profile: Hi! Please read the following information carefully! For this opportunity please apply here and also fill out our application form: https://forms.gle/p2R7MiiLx5R2CzAc8. Please DO NOT USE AI samples in writing your application! We want the real you - not a bot. We welcome motivated, flexible, friendly, curious and self-confident volunteers with good communication skills and ideally a sense of humor. By volunteering at Yiddish Summer Weimar, you can take a look behind the scenes of a major cultural festival. Our volunteers play a major role in realizing our goal. They can contribute their existing strengths to various areas of responsibility and learn new skills at the same time. Through volunteering, you can get to know the international community for Yiddish culture, get a taste of workshops, exchange stories and experiences at informal get-togethers or even get musically active yourself at jam sessions. You can support in one (or two) of the following task areas: 1) Infopoint Tasks: Point of contact for artists, participants, and visitors; providing information, ticket sales, merchandise, copying requests, cleanliness, and much more. Useful qualities: You enjoy working with people, are a good listener, attentive, empathetic, and organized. 2) Events & Awareness Tasks: Assistance with event preparation and follow-up, admission & beverage sales, fundraising, event technology basics, awareness at events, and much more. Useful qualities: You are active and enjoy getting things done, like working in a team, can handle (short-term) stressful situations well, and communicate openly. 3) OMA Care Team & Awareness Tasks: Preparation and clean-up of rooms, event support, awareness at OMA events, preparation and clean up of the cafeteria if necessary (general cleanliness) Useful qualities: You are orderly, attentive, and structured, like to get things done, are not afraid of direct communication or getting dirty.
Deadline: 15/05/2026 12:00

ℹ️ Additional information

The project is implemented under the European Solidarity Corps Programme, financed by the European Commission.
The participating organisations have to be mindful of these needs as they are responsible for providing a respectful and trusting hosting environment. At the same time, the organisations participating in the initiative devote a great deal of time, energy and resources to set up a high-quality activity; they should therefore expect that European Solidarity Corps participants show a similar level of respect for the local communities and the people that are directly concerned by the activities (https://youth.europa.eu/solidarity/mission_en).
What do we provide ?

Training before and after the project
Health insurance during your project
round-trip travel reimbursement
accommodation and food
pocket money
language course
Return Week-end
Youth Pass and SVI international Volunteer passport

Before applying for this volunteering project, you need to enroll yourself at European Solidarity Corps Platform (https://europa.eu/youth/solidarity_en) and specify your European Solidarity Corps Participant Number (PRN).
This organisation holds a European Solidarity Corps Quality Label.
Contact the ESC coordinator at +32 2 888 67 13 to get more informations.

Interested in this project? Create your account and apply online.