Erasmus+ is a programme of the European Union for education, training, youth and sport for 2014-2020. Erasmus+ Youth offers subventions for the countries of the Eastern Partnership, to which belongs as well the Republic of Moldova. Erasmus+ offers a wide field of mobility of persons for the purpose of education, innovation and exchange. The mobility of persons for the purpose of education applies to more types of activities – one of those is the European Voluntary Service (EVS). The EVS offers the opportunity of taking part in several voluntary activities abroad for persons between 17 and 30 years in a special amount of time (2-12 months).
Casa Providenței belongs to the number of organisations in the Republic of Moldova that participate in this programme. Since summer 2015 it is accreditted as Receiving Organisation for EVS volunteers. In order to facilicate the work in this programme, every organisation, represented by a coordinator of international volunteers, takes part in a training seminar which is organised by Erasmus+.

Also Casa Providenței has recently taken part in one of those seminars, represented by Chimia Ascherova, the coordinator of international volunteers. This seminar took place on Cyprus from 23-27 February and also many other organisations from different EU countries took part – EVS Sending, Coordination and Receiving Organisations. It was a very beautiful experience of partnership and cultural exchange in which everybody was presenting their activities. We had the possibility to experiment with methods of nonformal education, to gather experiences in the work with EVS volunteers and to analyse difficult situations at work which can be a challenge for coordinators. We analysed furthermore the process of recruitment of volunteers as well as the process of establishing a partnership between EVS organisations. It was a beautiful and useful experience. It hopefully will bring a lot of benefits for Casa Providenței, facilitate our beneficial activities and help us to be an organization which is able to work with volunteers and which can take part in their fruitful and multidimensional training and education.

Chimia Ascherova