"Through our project ""Youth meets Kindergarten"" the volunteer had the opportunity to gain new experiences in another European country,and thus in a different culture. Through the care of children of different nationalities and through the close proximity to the borderof Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, the volunteer was able to strengthen her European awareness.With us, she was able to gain a wide range of learning experiences: learning how to deal with children through individual and group care,prepare small animations and carry them out independently, act on her own responsibility, work in a team, acquiring social and pedagogic skills.The main activity of the volunteers was the care of our kindergarten children. Because of the fact that the volunteers mind was very open, socially, nature-loving and creative, she was able to participate in small activities with small groups during her volunteer year in free work, at the Sport lessons and during our weekly forest morning. For extracurricular projects with our preschool children the volunteer was needed as additional accompaniment. Over time, she was able to independently manage a large group of children during a number of hours all alone.In the course of the year, the volunteer has gained a lot of independence and openness. She has primarily taken care of the children who did not speak German or children who had difficulties with integration. She was an important caregiver for those children. However, she took care of all the children and provided very good care. She also showed her commitment in primary school and supervised a school class for a week on their class trip along the Belgian coast.The Youthpass recorded all the competences she had acquired. The volunteer is now studying to become a Waldorf teacher - we are sure that this year in our kindergarten will have been an important year for her - giving a basic orientation and preparation for her studies."

Our project “Youth meets nursery school” provided the opportunity for the volounteer to gain experience in another European country and thus in another culture. Our volounteer decided to end the EFD in december 2016 after some weeks of illness. It was her own decision; therefore the aims and intentions of our project cannot be considered as achieved, we are very sorry about that evolution, but we couldn't take positive influence to make her continue her stay in Belgium.Our volounteer could have become more open-minded regarding her mindset and her actions by caring for children from different nationalities in a border region between Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Hence, the experience could have been strenghtened and she could get supported her European awareness. The volounteer could have collected a huge diversity of experiences: handling of little children in groups or in individual situations, prepare little animation sequences, animation of those sequences, act self-responsable, work in a team, collect social and pedagogical skills. She missunderstood the main activity during her stay, she interpreted other aims in her activity but she didn't talk about a long time. Childminding for nursery school children was not as funny for her; she started happy but in progress of her stay she remarked that she is not happy with this activities. There were health-problems occuring on top, so that she took the decision to return home and not to continue her stay.

"Our project ""Youth meets Kindergarten"" offered an 18 year old volunteer from Austria/Vorarlberg the opportunity to make new experiences in our country and thus in a different culture. It was our aim that the volunteers became open in their thinking and doing by taking care of children of different nationalities and by the situation close to the borders to Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Thus their European consciousness was promoted and strengthened. In her letter of motivation, the volunteer had stated that she was creative, liked working with children and that she had already worked in a kindergarten as part of a holiday job. In addition, she may want to start training as a kindergarten teacher after the EVS. In our institution she was able to gain a wide range of learning experiences in this respect: learning how to deal with children through individual and group care, taking on animations, acting flexibly on her own responsibility, working in a team and acquiring pedagogical skills.The main activity of the volunteers was the care of our kindergarten children (3-6 years). The volunteer in turn accompanied one of our mixed-age kindergarten groups and thus always had a professional guide nearby. These were mainly pedagogical activities prepared by the kindergarten team. She accompanied individual kindergarten children or groups of children during their free play in Montessori, assisted with the morning circles and helped with a wide variety of activities in the everyday life of the kindergarten. In extracurricular projects with our preschool children and in activities at extracurricular learning locations, the volunteer was needed as additional support. The involvement of the volunteers in the pedagogical work resulted in an added value for the volunteer. Our kindergarten children could be better accompanied and supported by this increased care key. This had a positive effect on the whole kindergarten life. Through their care, the volunteers were able to help the children who needed it for a good development."

Our project “Youth meets nursery school” provided the opportunity for the volounteer to gain experience in another European country and thus in another culture. Our volounteer became more open-minded regarding her mindset and her actions by caring for children from different nationalities in a border region between Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Hence, the experience strenghtened and supported her European awareness.The volounteer could collect a huge diversity of experiences: handling of little children in groups or in individual situations, prepare little animation sequences, animation of those sequences, act self-responsable, work in a team, collect social and pedagogical skills. The main activities were childminding for nursery school children. As a consequence of her open-minded, social, nature-loving and sportily nature, she could animate some activities with little groups of children during the afternoons, during the sportlessons and our weekly taking place wood-morning. She assisted in except scholastically projects and acompagnied our pree-school-group for some excursions. After some months she was able to teach one of our groups without the need of help of one of our nursery-teachers – all by herselfDuring the stay the volounteer has become more independent and more communicative. With priority she took care of our children, who weren’t able to speak the german language. Therefore she was a very important person fort he relationship to those children. She did a very good job by caring of all children – withoput making differences between them.We used the Youthpass to collect all the assumed competences. Our volounteer is looking forward to do pedagogical studies in Austria – the experiences she could make during the last year in our nursery-school will certainly grant for a good base to start her formation.