Short Environmental project in UK South Devon

The 8 volunteer placements will be based on a farm in rural South Devon where volunteers will live and work with a mixed and multicultural society. Young people will have been selected via tried and tested recruitment mechanisms in the best way to reach and empower rural young people to take action and opportunity. The placement itself will involve a wide range of nature conservation tasks including improving wildlife habitat, engaging & educating local audiences with nature conservation and widening participation in nature conservation. Via these tasks volunteers will gain insight into the sector, and develop a personal network of employers and organisations working in the sector thus improving their career prospects. They will be actively trained in employability skills via focused training sessions with qualified staff, and participate in workshops (university taster days, short courses) aimed at improving employability skills. Furthermore in achieving a recognised qualification they will improve their employment prospects.
Through sharing their placement with a diverse multi cultural cohort of students, trainees and other volunteers they will increase their awareness of environmental issues facing EU by proxy. This will be enhanced by actively encouraging these volunteers to present their observations of nature conservation management towards the end of their placement to an audience of local people and disabled adults form a local charity. This sharing of observations will increase awareness of environmental issues as well as intercultural diversity (and similarity) in EU project to a wide audience, all the while improving the volunteers presentation and public speaking skills.
The volunteers will be encouraged to take on a personal project whilst on placement relating to a specific environmental issue, subject or research topic. Their project will tie into the pre-established management system for the farm where they will be based, but they will be encouraged to assess the quality of that management and to use their initiative as to other ways of farming and living sustainably. As the farm is a working small livestock holding, volunteers will be encouraged to propose new and innovative ideas to the farm manager as part of their personal project.
In living in a communal way with English as the common language, as well as sharing their day to day work with a mixed multicultural local and international community of people, the 2 volunteers will naturally learn English. This learning will be supported by applied language courses delivered by one of the Ambios team, qualified in both nature conservation training as language delivery. This dual approach to learning (environmental subject and English language) has a proven track record of delivering high impact, fun, and long lasting learning, as well as being personalised due to the small class size and ongoing access to the tutor. Finally the two organisations involved in this project hope to use this project as a pilot, and establish strong working system for this and future projects that will deliver their organisational aims and enhance their internationalisation strategies. Both organisations are committed to improving youth participation and will use this project to hone their skills and approaches to youth volunteering via ongoing communication. Future fundraising initiatives will further this objective.