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BENEVOLENTS AND VOLUNTEERS
Preamble: on the presence of trainees
Trainees are both a treasure for everyone (awaking personal awareness, budding vocations, support for associations once they return, etc.) and a responsibility, especially if the experience is a bad one! These two aspects should be borne in mind when seeking the best compromises, i.e., weigh the consequences and take into account the number of trainees, the duration of their stay and the rotation resulting from these last two factors. Short-term stays (2 to 5 weeks) are not long enough for trainees to get involved in a project. At the most, they provide the opportunity to observe, discover a different culture, take bearings by integrating into a local team, decide to come back for a longer stay, think out a "real project" to implement during the second stay, provide information on their return to France and then take an active part in the work of the support association. Longer stays (6 weeks to 6 months, with the corresponding statute) make it possible to carry out a real project or (6 months to 2 years) to take responsibility within the association by fulfilling a specific function. High rotation complicates the administration of manpower and may lead to emotional problems for the children who thus see a succession of different faces. A high proportion of trainees (more than 20% of the local complement), even momentarily, may be a burden on the organization and create problems with the permanent staff. Benevolent
or volunteer? Definition
The trainees situation depends on whether they are benevolent or voluntary:
Nevertheless, some benevolents prepare for their voyage by collecting funds beforehand (business sponsorship, public or private subsidy, various donations). These funds may be provided by a support association (in a special subsidiary bank account for that purpose). The benevolents may use this subsidiary account to finance their voyage as well as for a project for the children in the field.
Length of stay
and risk insurance The lenght of stay - short or long term - affects the risk coverage.
Formalities
to be completed
by an association wishing to employ a volunteer To employ a person as a volunteer, the employing organization is advised to seek the approval of the French Government. Failing that, the employing organization may address its request to a "covering" organization in possession of such approval, which will submit the request. If this is accepted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris, the latter may offer to ensure social security coverage and also the retirement contributions for the volunteer. The cost is about 1300 euros per annum. The "covering" organization will be guarantor for the volunteer who must follow a training course, from a week to 3 months, depending on the "covering" organization and/or the country of destination, the aim being to test the volunteer's knowledge and motivations. There are about fifty approved organizations dealing with these requests for voluntary work. Some have affinities with a given country, or a given speciality (medicine, social work, development, education, agriculture, etc.) or are religion-based (DCC, CCFD, Friends of Sister Emmanuelle, CEFODE, ...).
Selection,
information
Unprepared departures should be avoided to prevent disillusionment for both parties. How to monitor the requests to preclude incompetent people or those with serious psychological problems? Before a contract is signed, it is advisable to organize a meeting between the candidate and a psychologist who will provide insight into the candidate's maturity, balance, autonomy, ability to adapt, accept differences, respect others, and who will detect "parasitic" motivations (escape, onerous personal problems not dealt with, health). The candidate must be apprised in detail (if possible with someone working in the field) of the conditions of life, work, climate, diet, awaiting them. Some countries are extremely destabilizing for a Westerner who discovers the depth of his ignorance as he discovers the local culture. He must be asked to respect strictly the customs of the country. The child must live there and it would be dangerous for the volunteer to try to turn that child into a little French or American child. The trainee-to-be must also be warned against the temptation to establish a privileged relationship with a specific child, which might provoke, on the one hand, great distress through the child's being forsaken once again on the volunteer's departure, and on the other the jealousy of the other children. Children always show pleasure on meeting foreigners, having their photo taken, receiving little gifts, but a condescending attitude, or impulsiveness, impatience or anger provoke great upset or hurt both children and adults. The trainee may be provided with a benevolent or volunteer "guide" as is done already by several associations, such as Ashalayam, Caméléon or Virlanie. The
contract
A clear contract, written and signed, must be drawn up, specifying the rights and duties of all parties and accompanied by the benevolent or volunteer "guide". It is advisable, in so far as possible, to specify, in any contract for longer than six weeks, a project that the trainee will prepare before departure, then carry out during his stay in accordance with his abilities, aptitudes and motivations. It is a good idea to indicate which permanent person on site will be responsible for welcoming and keeping an eye on the trainee during his stay. Financial
indemnities
Indemnities paid to volunteers are at least 150 euros per month but rarely exceed the French minimum wage (about 800 euros). It is usual to pay at least the equivalent of one and a half times the monthly local salary (of the project). Other extracts from reports
and testimonies from REPER members
"Goodwill isn't enough to educate wayward children. In 1989, the University of Amsterdam sent a specialist in child psychology for children with learning difficulties. Within 3 months she has set up an education system and an acccelerated training technique. This system is still in force today. After her departure, the work was continued by a French woman psychologist and a Spanish woman education specialist. ORPER insists upon a secundary education diploma. If the candidates are succesful, they may work in the evening, while, during the day, studying for a professional and educational degree at the Kinshasa Pedagogical Institute. In spite of their qualifications, most of them have little idea how to tackle the education of street childrren: either they lack what it takes to confront the difficulties, or they are too sensitive to the comments made to them, and, for various other reasons, are not accepted by the children. They cannot put theory into practice and do not know, therefore, how to resolve the problems arising each day. ORPER is thus developing permanent training based on concrete cases. The experience gained shows that studies are needed to acquire a scientific base and that permanent training is indispensable for learning to apply scientific knowledge on the ground."
"The educators' role become untenable. The children they care for need tenderness, the tenderness missing in their childhood and teens. When this tenderness is offered, the children confuse it with the only experiences they have lived through, those of sexual perversion; the latter is for them the only means of exchange with another, the only vocabulary available to them to communicate with the adult world, the perverted world they have frequented. The educational, parental environment we try to build around them in the welcoming hostels is confused, by them, with their previous experiences. Everything becomes seduction, every relationship construed as sexual. For example: girls subjected to prostitution at an early age do not know how to exchange a kiss on the cheek... as a token of sympathy, they offer their mouth, their body, they live as instruments of pleasure and not as sentient beings. They do not have the words to say, to exchange. It is normal to a child, a teenager, why not an adult indeed, to sit on the knee of someone who "means" something to them. It is normal that the person, providing the knee, uses reassuring gestures: caressing the hair, offering a shoulder, consoling with words and gestures which seem to each of us part of our means of expression, our "work" tools. There are situations of extreme distress which call for silence, presence, compassionate gestures. To outlaw all signs of tenderness is to deny the child his or her needs. Yes, there are adult child molesters and they mus be combatted, but every adult who permits him or herself to express emotions should not be seen as a dangerous seductor. The only solution will soon be to entrust children's education to programmed robots, and nothing else! What is a child seeking when he or she denounces an adult innocent of these accusations? Revenge? To be the centre of attention? Hundreds of reasons could be found, but if it is true to say that the child's word has a sense, it cannot be affirmed that that word is true. There is nothing more dangerous than feeding the child's fantasy of total power: certainly, the child has rights, but so has the adult, in addition to his ou her duties."
La Rue des Enfants comprised of students of the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Paris helps associations on the ground to draw up budgets, prepare requests for funds, put accounts in order, etc. and... make the children sing or dance with them.
Virlanie has edited a "guide for volunteers" sent to those submitting a candidature, so that every one, given his or her circumstances, may find the means to join with the common aims of the Foundation, spin a common web of the desires of each and all, while respecting the culture and the langauage of persons as yet unknown. Volunteers come to serve and to bring something of themselves to the Foundation. They have not come to apply their ideas or pre-fabricated programmes without reference to local realities. Contents of the guide:
OSER classes volunteers in categories:
Ashalayam has drafted a charter summarizing the Institution's desires and expectations. Before commiting themselves, the candidates must visit the various centers to understand their functioning, methods, type of work and organization. Then, and only then, may they submit a candidature. The volunteers are asked to voice, most freely, their suggestions and innovative ideas, for the responsibles feel that the system improves continuously thanks to the ideas of those who involve themselves intelligently in the programme, take an active interest in it, make it progress.
In our last newsletter on the subject of training welfare workers, emphasis was put on the need to professionalize this "job unlike others". The idea being that the welfare worker was not only a "charitable person" whose devotion to work replied to the immediate needs of the child. Certainly giving food and offering care is indispensable; but instruction, education and bringing-up a child cannot be improvised. Good intentions are not sufficient, tested methods must be learnt by experience even if sometimes, in an emergency, it’s necessary to improvise. The tasks of a welfare worker are many and varied. No individual can alone reply to all the needs. One street-worker said so wisely "one can’t be good at everything". Nothing replaces team-work where each member contributes according to his particular competence, where the relay of help comes at the moment it’s required, where the supporting smile of a colleague gives the encouragement needed in times of difficulty and helps to avoid an error otherwise probable. For it is true that sometimes, unconsciously, risks are taken endangering the child, or the street-worker, or both. One such risk, and a grave risk indeed it is, is not to keep a certain distance between teacher and child in order to avoid all possibility of misinterpretation of the relationship between them. Favouritism, or what may appear to be favouritism, can ruin the relationships between worker and child, or amongst the children themselves. Lies and rumours come from who-knows-where, and sometimes imply slander and even suspicion of pedophilia. Several street-workers have had to face such accusations, from which one never recovers completely. Caught–up in other priorities, few are those institutions which warn street-workers of these dangers and establish the rules to avoid them. Amongst these rules: forbidding the invitation of a child to ones home, to interfere in his private life, to offer presents or money or travel. It seems that the best cover from these risks lies in working in teams where children are in contact with several teachers at any one time and who share the tasks together.
Our thanks to Stefan Vanistendael, of BICE in Geneva who, after reading our last newsletter sends these comments: Such voluntary work is complementary to the professional work, and not a means to get over the financial shortages. Sometimes the voluntary worker is better placed to do the job than is the professional, in prison visitation for example."  Created
on 29 april, 2006 - Updated on 17 november, 2007 |
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