📝 Detailed information
🏢 About the local organisation
The Association for Sport and Experience-oriented Integrative Social Work VSS-Ilmenau offers a variety of social, sporting and cultural projects for children and young people. This includes support for social work and family assistance, social meeting points such as the youth club Oasis and many sports and adventure-oriented activities for young people. Within the workcamp international volunteers can experience the social life of the association and help to beautify the green areas of the city.
💼 What the programme involves
The volunteers of the workcamp are invited to cultivate selected green areas. In the area of a former spa, you can help to preserve a river bank as a biotope and create a nice environment for recreation. This includes the cutting of trees and branches of hedges. You can learn willow weaving in order to create fancy furniture from pastures. There is also a lot of gardening work to do in the outdoor area of the youth club: laying and harvesting of the raised beds, moving the compost, repairing a fence. The work always takes place outside and in a green surrounding!
🏠 Accommodation on site
Volunteers will be accommodated in a social center. Kitchen and showers can be used there.
📍 About the location
The town of Ilmenau is located on the northern edge of the Thuringian Forest. It is surrounded by forests and is home to a technical university, which has some 6,200 students enrolled. But it is also a sport city, especially in winter sports; Ilmenau even is home of Olympic champions. The main industry nowadays is mechanical engineering. In the past the mining industry (copper, silver and manganese) was also of great importance, since 1777 there was a significant porcelain industry. At the time of Goethe and in the following decades, Ilmenau was a popular tourist attraction and until the First World War it was a spa.
The leisure activities are arranged together with the youth centers located in Ilmenau. There are many possible encounters with young people in the area; Common sporting activities such as swimming, football, billiards, summer toboggan-run, table tennis or climbing are possible. Volunteers can also get to know the diverse facets of Ilmenau: his historical testimonies as a former spa and health resort (The classical German author Goethe was a frequent visitor), his importance as a mining and university town and also the charm of his pond landscapes and biosphere reserves within the urban area. The history of Ilmenau can be explored by visiting the local museum and the show mine. As cultural program, excursions to the local mountain Kickelhahn and Lindenberg, to Erfurt or Eisenach are possible.
During the workcamp, there will be the traditional Kickelhahnfest with open air music, dancing and games.
ℹ️ Additional information
After registration, we require a self-declaration concerning the children and youth protection. Please bring workwear and raincoats, sleeping bag, camping mat, bathing suit, music, your talents and something specific from your country.
