Project name: DIVNOGORYE
Start of activities: April 15, 2011
Duration of activities: min 6 months (up to 8 months)
Type of activities: ENVIRONMENT, CULTURAL HERITAGE
Nr of volunteers
for hosting: up to 4 vols
ACTIVITY DESIGN:
Aims and theme(s) of the Activity:
With this project Club of Intercultural Cooperation InterActon wants to attract local volunteers to the unique heritage of the region and to raise the consciousness of local inhabitants in their relations to the surrounding environment.
Location
The project will run in the most beautiful place of the Black Earth region – in the open air museum and natural preserve Divnogorje www.divnogor.ru (which can be translated as “Wonder Mountains”). This place is surrounded by villages, the next big city (84 000 inhabitants) named Liski
is 87 km away (30 min per train or 1 hour by bus).
Hosting locals (staff of the museum) try to discover the diverse resources of the place and open them for the other world. This unique place includes treasures for scientists of different areas (archeologists, ornithologists, geologists and architects). A river, high chalk hills as the border of ice age period and breathtaking view to the valley brings to this place artists, pilgrims and nature lovers.
Project
Local staff of the open air museum and the natural preserve organize many educational, archeological expeditions, excursions, ornithological base, attract attention of different artists (2 festivals yearly run in this place), pilgrims come to this place to enjoy the stunning masterpiece of nature. Approximately
25 000 visitors come yearly to the museum. But so many visitors create a problem of protection the territory from pollution. The museum staff has to take enormous additional workload on promotion of ecological values and protection of environment. In this work they need help. Volunteering opens large perspectives in overcoming many difficulties in this field. Today the local and international volunteering is one of the most modern and efficient solutions for such organization. Hosting (international) volunteers will help to attract additional funding to the project realization and interest of mass media. Raising the visibility of the project is one of the most important aims of the project.
First step in the preparatory phase is already done: the museum hosts local volunteers, hosts international workcamps, does promotional work in the local educational establishments (institutes and universities). The aim of the museum is to host volunteers on the long-term basis during all warm season during many years.
Tasks for voluntary work
- work on environmental issues (creative solution of rubbish problem, deleting useless plants, planting useful plants, cleaning, cutting woods). Attention! The work can be physically hard!!!
- work on promotion of ecological values, social work (actions for visitors and locals, building signs for tourists, seminars/workshops for guests on big evens and festivals in Divnogorye)
- work on multiplication of effects (web-site update, articles to newspapers, interviews to local TV, meetings with students)
The volunteer will be part of the staff of the museum and work on protection of the natural museum from pollution, on saving its ancient face untouched from destructive influence of civilization, on raising the ecological consciousness of visitors and local inhabitants. Concrete tasks of volunteers will be:
1. Fight against rubbish: together with Russian volunteers cleaning river banks, organize educational actions for raising ecological consciousness of visitors and local inhabitants of the next villages; install rubbish bins, design and arrangement of visitors’ stands. Creativity is welcomed!
2. Protection of unique plants and other natural heritage: cleaning the hills and caves from cherry bushes and other weeds, planting protective plants, restoring tourist paths.
3. Participation in the festival events organized by the museum: Museum’s Night, historical reconstruction of ancient Slavic celebrations and festivities, artistic Forum ArchiArt and so on, inventing creative environmental workshop while big events.
Working hours, days off, holidays, food, accommodation, local transport
The total sum of working hours will not come over 30 h/week including Russian lessons. The volunteer will be working five days a week, 30 working hours. He/she will get two days off per week and a settled number of holidays plus national state holidays. The place is quite far from big cities (30 min by train from Liski 84 000 inhabitants, 4 hours by train from Voronezh 1 mio inhabitants), but the infrastructure is present: a shop and urgent medical help is available. In spring and summer the museum village is visited by scientist, artists, travelers from all over the world.
The volunteer will share the room with 1 or 2 volunteers of the same gender. Volunteers will have all facilities in their flat: shower, hot water, toilet, dining room and possibilities to cook. In addition to the pocket money the volunteer will receive a monthly allowance for food and local transport from the hosting organisation.
Training and support of volunteers
Host organisation InterAction Club will provide volunteers with a on-arrival training. This training helps the volunteer to get to know the host country and the village where to volunteer will live. It helps to understand the host society and will help the volunteer to adjust to the new environment. During the service host organisation will provide the volunteer with a mentor for social issues and a contact person in the project in work related issues. They will ensure on-going support and coaching. The mentors will assist to evaluate the learning process and make necessary adjustments to meet needs and interests of the volunteer.
The volunteer will experience through learning by doing and short training sessions on concrete topics to meet needs of the volunteer. A tutor will be provided for language training.
Social and personal development of the volunteer(s), learning outcomes
- volunteers who have interest in any of above mentioned sciences (archeology, ecology, ornithology etc) will have a perfect possibility to enlarge and deepen their knowledge, meet scientist in those fields, collect practical material for their scientific works as well…
- volunteers will get practical knowledge of how a natural preserve works and will have a possibility to take active part in its development
- the volunteer will see the real life of Russian province, far away from capitals and will be a participating witness of how the provincial life is reach and diverse in its tension to develop and to protect its individuality.
- Volunteers will learn Russian during all period of his/her stay
- Volunteers will gain skills of climbing, speleology, kayak-paddling according to their interest
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