EVS Project

Dear volunteer,

Welcome to the Russian Orthodox church in Iceland! 😊

Russian Orthodox Church in Iceland was founded in 1995. The total number of members of the community is more than 650 people. The majority of members are migrants from Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Greece. But many of our members speak Russian.

Therefore, the large role of the work in is necessary to include the functioning of the educational and cultural, art and community  bealding projects. Our main objectives on the parish are focused on strengthening the sense of community of Russian speakers in Iceland through a series of cultural activities. With this, we have the aim of creating an inclusive space and platform for development that can also be considered as a safe haven for our members.
This means that the parish has the objective of helping the Russian-speaking community in their adaptation to the Icelandic society through advice and direction. Furthermore, an important goal for the parish is to be able to spread relevant information to our members in the proper time and manner. Additionally, the parish has the aim of helping our members achieve an integral and happy life, which as foreigners, includes having a sense of home in terms of food, culture and traditions.
The activities of the parish include a Saturday School, a Youth Theater-Studio, a Public Library, as well as art classes. Likewise, the parish is constantly organizing concerts, cultural events and exhibitions and participates in public events and study programs.

The scope of activities for the volunteers will change during their stay and can be divided in five (5) different stages:

🙋Organisation of events and to help in the work Saturday School,
🙋Creating catalog of the Public Library,
🙋Media work (websites, social networks, blogs),
🙋Worthy represent the organization and the EVS project,
🙋Assistance in the daily work of the center.

Learning to learn as the volunteers will have the chance to organize and develop their own learning and will always look for ways to promote sustainability aspects in interesting ways.

☝☝☝ It`s important to us that the volunteer not will become a person, who merely execute assignments, but a resource who will contribute to develop the organization further and placing our work in a new perspective. In other words, we want the volunteer to know all levels of organizational work, which opens up for the volunteer to gain skills which enables the volunteer to start his or her own projects or continue organizational work after he or she has ended the EVS.

We believe that if we expect the volunteer to use the knowledge when coming home it is important to learn and to do projects from beginning to the end. The width of activities will give the volunteer a chance to experience every aspect of local and regional work, and to develop and test skills on strategically work in an organisation. The activities will be created in the field between the volunteer’s creativity and skills, and the need and initiatives of the members. The carrying out of these activities, will also be a mutual responsibility of all the involved parts, not only the volunteer.

While staying at the parish, we see a broad spectre of areas for the volunteer to develop and improve personal skills at. One of the major skills will be on an organisational level. Learning more about organisations, motivating and empowering youth to improve their the local community, planning and administrating activities and events. Another will be on an entrepreneurial level. We very much welcome the volunteer`s own initiative and would like to facilitate the resources necessary to put new ideas into life, off course dependant of if we have the necessary resources. Another area is knowledge and information. The volunteer will learn and develop skills on how to communicate with youth, working strategically towards reaching a target group with information and getting the message clear and using different medias in this process. The volunteer will also be able to test and challenge his/hers skills when it comes to tutoring, counselling and media work.

Information work onthe parish and our projects toward schools and communities, media work, internal information and contact with local groups and the youth has an ambition to do in a wider and more strategically manner than they find the time and capacity for at the time.

About current EVS projects of the organization you can check on the website: europa.eu

Your CV and motivation letter you can sent to e-mail: projects@orthodox.is

Do your the best EVS project with us!  🙌 😎