ESC: Volunteering in the Artic

AFS Iceland is a non-governmental, non-profit, voluntary organisation that, through educational-youth-exchanges, promotes intercultural learning and understanding. AFS is a peace organisation and it is the belief of the organisation that by increasing knowledge, understanding and awareness of different cultures through non-formal education, we take important steps towards a more tolerant, just and peaceful world. AFS encourages respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms without distinction as to race, sex, language, religion or social stats. AFS works primarily with young people between 15 and 30 years old. Our activities focus around organising exchanges and ensuring their quality in terms of education, intercultural learning and global citizenship education. This means that we don’t organise exchange as a travel experience, but as an introduction to a lifelong journey young people are ready to begin. Exchange programmes management focuses mainly on looking for host families for our students, supporting their participation in the programmes as volunteers, providing the best support for students who are hosted in Iceland (with support on educational level, logistics, language, intercultural learning journey). As a sending organisation we provide the whole preparation before departure which contains all logistics needed to proceed the exchange on a formal level, supporting students with all their questions and hesitations, providing interviews and orientation camps which are designed in a way that enable both AFS and students check whether they’re ready for this kind of experience. As a volunteer based organisation we support our volunteers with their volunteer’s path. It starts on the very individual level as providing each volunteer space for service and development. Most of our volunteers are former exchange students which give them and us lots of experience helpful with running programmes we have. However it’s very important to provide them continuity of experience and reassurance of the learning path they may take as volunteers as well. On the other hand there are many volunteers who haven’t been on exchange and their contribution to AFS is equally important. Our activities are also related to their development - providing workshops, training and any assistance they may need. All in all, in order to provide volunteers’ development and offer quality to the volunteers journey, AFS organises different events for volunteers such as: weekend camps, integration events, trainings and workshops in order to provide space to grow and develop their skills. As an organisation whose main mission is to provide intercultural learning opportunities, we organise training and events which are supposed to share intercultural learning values. ICL and GCE is a “box” of different activities. We offer it through exchange programmes, hosting programmes, volunteer development, collaboration with schools or with local institutions. Throughout our activities which were listed above, we try to raise motivation and confidence related to running social projects and taking actions addressing social needs, which are important in the society we live in (on local, national and international level).