📝 Detailed information
🏢 About the local organisation
The Sugny Refugees Centre accommodates people who have asked for asylum in Belgium. Many of them fled from war or persecution. Before these people may start their new lives, their refugee status has to be proven and accepted. While waiting for the documents that will enable them to remain legally in our country, the immigrants are accommodated in this centre.
People living there await the solution concerning their administrative status. They never know what tomorrow may bring to them.
Therefore, residents often found themselves overwhelmed by feelings of relief and anguish, hope and disappointment. The life of Sugny Asylum seeker Centre reflects these individual dramas and big international tensions.
💼 What the programme involves
This project is based on a dynamic meeting between the volunteers and the residents of the refugee center. With the help of technical leader, volunteers, young and older residents will work together to achieve several missions within the center: development of the outdoor meeting spaces (construction of benches, outdoor games, garden ...), you will also be asked to organize activities with the residents: sports, crafts, games. To a lesser extent, you will also paint some rooms of the centre.
🏠 Accommodation on site
Volunteers will be sleeping in a common room (dormitory) in a building next to the central one. Showers are accessible in a central building.
Meals will be provided by the Centre. Please, be aware that meals are simple. Vegetarian or any other diet should be announced in advance.
📍 About the location
Sugny is a very small and isolated village in the south of the country (near the French border). By choosing this workcamp, you decide to live in the nature. All around, there are fields, woods and small villages. But there are plenty of opportunities for entertainment: football fields and basketball playgrounds, TV room… During the weekend, it will be possible to organise cultural visits and to travel to the biggest Belgian cities.
⚠️ Requirements
This project requests volunteers with a good level of motivation for its theme and who are prepared to integrate the life of a refugee center. We recommend that they have an idea about the policy concerning refugees in their own country.
In order to demonstrate this, we ask the candidate volunteers:
- to answer our specific questionnaire (if you do not have it yet, please ask it to your sending organisation).
We will not confirm any placement request before analysis of the questionnaire.
ℹ️ Additional information
Workcamp language: Kids are quite fluent in French thank to school, adults take longer time to learn foreign language. The languages used among the residents are very different – French, Russian, English, German… more than 15 in general and depend on current presence of residents.