Volunteer Information
From SI Exco News
Volunteering
Servas has many volunteer positions. Contact your local servas member for more information about local volunteer positions. Contact information : http://www.servas.org/index.php?id=InfoCenter%3AWeb+sites%3AInternational%3AMember+countries
If you can not locate your country coordinator, email us helpdesk@servas.org
Help Wanted: Web Content Editor http://www.servas.org/siexco/index.php/Technical_Help_Wanted
Help Wanted: RSS Feed to Email Conversion http://www.servas.org/test.html
- Spanish? Help us build an equivalent page at Main_Page_Spanish
Servas International Membership Team committee – 3 positions
(Eva and her colleagues have greatly helped Servas through good will, dedication, precise and kindly/caring approach, and languages knowledge. They are outstanding helpers.) Now, we are looking for successors….please! The Membership Team Job • Review national groups qualifications for membership (set in Statutes) • Sort through national reports prepared by member groups to check status of group • Prepare report and for use by General Assembly, Executive Committee and others
The Skills
Teamwork, concentration, accurate communications, willingness to help. Ability to organize information from several sources, organize, and report clearly and constructively. Understanding of how Servas works.
ICT (ICT is technical. – 5 or more positions needed
Servas lives in many global centres of technology: India, Ireland, USA….)
ICT supports Servas in important technical support during a time of transitions: new server, software innovations through software upgrades, coaching and support, helpdesk for website.
You will work with Omer, Marco, Mario, Rita, Renee, Uwe, Claudio and others and also assist cooperatively with more than a dozen volunteers completing the Servas On Line project. Please look through host lists, talk to Servas friends and recommend helpers.
The ICT Job
ICT Services Manager – establish and monitor levels of service based on Servas needs and industry standards; prepare ICT budget, services contracts, negotiate sponsored or deep discount contracts, plan main milestones, monitor results, and report high-level results; develop teamwork; assist in cooperative support to Servas Online and Dolphin development.
ICT Helpdesk Operator – Servas has a general helpdesk thanks to Lizette. Now Servas needs specialists in the ICT/Website/Server operation, to assist with the user and management of applications. Make sure the featured applications are working, understood, and arrange to upgrade to current versions, etc.
Data Base Editors – help national secretaries, convenors etc to keep data base current. Website editor assistants – technical specialist in Wiki or Joomla; assistance in editing and design for active officers, convenors and support to Helper Editors
Knowledge - these positions require knowledge of the software suites used by Servas. You may learn on the job, but these are not training positions.
Volunteers for ICT must be competent within specialized fields. The positions appeal to experienced technical or professional people, who wish to support international project teams for fun, international profile and to do good work in support of the Servas global mission. Retirees and senior specialists as well as junior technicians are welcome.
Abilities teamwork, even over long distance and through virtual meetings; positive attitude, dedicated attention; clear communications; application of professional or advanced technical to the Servas situation; able to explain and help laypersons make Servas outstanding and fun.
Volunter Information Kit
In this file you will find information about Servas, its structure and a description of the volunteer positions.
http://www.servas.org/siexco/index.php/Image:Volunteer_Information.doc
Train the Trainers
WorkShop Life Mapping
Workshop on Life Mapping A) Preface: Becoming a Servas World Traveller
My story is about the beginning of Servas, a global network of friendship and peace [servas.org] and the awakening of my own mind.
A war had stopped, and a new one had not yet begun. I was free to begin a slow overland trip from Norway to India, looking at people and landscapes.
During my journey, I found myself meeting people, and engaging with them, not just looking at them.
As my journey continued, I realized I had been living in a cultural cage. While I grew in awareness, my life-values broadened, to include the values and landscapes of others.
An ever-deepening awareness infused my ingrained assumptions. Rainbow colours steeped through shades of grey consciousness. Freed from the shackles of my American upbringing and mentality I became a global citizen. My human community revealed itself like an unfolding a magic quilt of life styles and manners: Myriad designs, reweaved into a tapestry of thinking and living.
You can renew yourself, too.
Shifting from a passive tourist absorbing scenic vistas to an engaged traveller actively searching the central ideas of cultures takes time. We hardly notice the first changes in our internal voice. Let it happen. Just give yourself time to breathe and become inspired. Practice listening, seeing with understanding, Let passive Mind bloom naturally. Leave aside Judgement and Prejudice, prepare for Sharing and Memory. Take time to discover Joy of Sharing. participate in the lives and places of others
As I learned to listen with empathy, even humble persons from distant corners of the globe became my mentors, pulling me into undreamed of chambers of thoughts and insights. I was no longer a touring observer looking in but a participant savouring many ways of life.
Recollection: my journey in a seeker's trip begun before the Servas network of friendly hosts. My unimagined rewards, life-enhancing insights and experiences of 50 years ago now await every Servas traveller. You can be helped along your wakeful way by welcoming Servas hosts. [ ~ Ottawa local Servas contact ~ C. Burgess]
You can skim my account on the gradual shedding of native prejudices and preconceptions “The Seeds of Servas”. You can see how I as a youth gave myself permission to blend with the people and cultures; to sense their yearnings and meanings; to glimpse their souls.
Strangers welcomed me as if I had always belonged to their communities. Why did they smile and hug me? Was it my deeds, rather than words, as I reached out to them? Or, maybe they felt my empathy. Somehow they understood their value and importance to me, and my search for their knowledge. I was not separated, like a scientist or journalist who studies people and places only as objects – and builds a wall around himself. I was treated like a son returning home after a long journey. Even policemen, wary during recovery from a time of war invited me to tea.
Now, fifty years later, my heart leaps as I remember those new friends, and their kindnesses, thoughtfulness, patience and generosity.
Since Servas was started, many others have adventured into the soul of the human family. Almost 15,000 hosts around the world are waiting to help you on your journey of discovery.
b) Your Journey
Each person is different. Our time, we who have journeyed earlier, is not your time.
Each of us has to begin our own journey. And the world is rapidly changing in ways we barely understand.
Advice to you from what have we learned over fifty years:
We do not have to travel far, to discover learnings and understandings. People and places near and far are needful; we can make a difference globally by real engagement locally.
Sometimes we do not know how to reach out, to get started in our journey.
Every community offers worthy people, sacred places and deeds to experience, explore and learn. New people are arriving at local communities, from distant places all over the world, but sometimes we do not know how to “see” them.
Modern distractions may cloud our opportunities for growth and meaning.
For these reasons, Servas invites you to a workshop on preparing yourself for your own journey. You will benefit from this workshop whether your journey takes you to a discovery of your neighbourhood, or to distant places.
Servas Workshop This workshop takes about an hour and a half, and lasts the rest of your life. Take it to become a more engaged life-traveller. Learn to train others, to help their journey.
Prepare yourself for growth and renewal.
Learn to reflect with people, and to experience nature and change.
Respect. Comfort others.
Bring home experience.
Recall. Put a new pin on your personal roadmap. Update your personal story.
An Opportunity to Witness Gandhian Non-Violence
An Opportunity to witness Gandhian non-violence:
Servas Travelers are encouraged to include experience of sites on their Intelligent Roadmap in their personal travel and study.
For instance, they are invited to witness a mass march in Delhi, where they may
Study sessions in Non Violence at a Gandhi Peace centre,
Witness a Peace March by 25,000 landless poor.
Sponsor of the learning experience: Servas India.
Background: Servas is dedicated to Gandhian ideals of non-violence and Peace. It has developed the Intelligent Roadmap as a practical operational programme to advance these ideals. The global strategic purpose of the Servas Mapping is to:
Help people understand and realize Gandhian ideals.
Provide practical experience to people to connect personally with sites of experiential learning.
Foster inter-cultural and real linkages between diverse peoples and groups. Through Servas Mapping ordinary people of any age may prepare to explore theories and practical examples of Non-Violence, in ways which connect them to the contemporary world and give them mastery over their priorities for experiential learning.
The Workshop outlined below is intended to assist Participants as individuals or members of groups, in developing their own Roadmap and in appreciating the lives, work and studies of others.
Premise/Need: Globally, many people cannot find words to describe the story of their lives, the current predicament of the world, nor ways of improving it. They live in a kind of historical illiteracy, and of estrangement from contemporary challenges, like the changing climate, global imbalance of wealth and poverty, the probability of nuclear war, the fragility of global and local food security. They may defer to others who have no lack of words – e.g. corporate advertisers, curriculum designers, organized religion and political leaders. But borrowed vocabularies cannot provide for intimate communication of what is real or personally meaningful.
Resources: Servas International is a people-to-people network of family hosts, travelers, students and workers facilitated by over 60 national member groups. It aims at interpersonal understanding of cultures through first-hand experience of each other, at home. Servas does not endorse political nor religious organizations. M. Gandhi continues to bear influence on goals of personal self-sufficiency, understanding of cultural diversity and of Non-Violence solutions to complex challenges. His models of social organization based on the individual, the home and on cooperative communities continue to inspire almost sixty years after his passing. His adherents include Vandana Shiva, who has distilled Principles of Earth Democracy.
P. Friere set out and successfully practiced a method of inciting individuals to give words to subjects important to them in their social-political landscape and to teach people, even illiterate people, how to communicate those words in writing. The World Wide Web provides opportunities for individuals and groups to consult each other over great distances, and to identify common goals and issues and propose actions. Among novel and useful developments: Conferencing for free or at very low cost using Skype and instant messenger. Blogging personal experiences and offering them for comment. Sharing personal images.
Mapping places of personal or sacred importance.
A)1. Facilitator guides each participant (or groups of Participants) in a short review of Gandhi’s teachings. (SEE on-line Wikipedia source: The Story of My Experiments with Truth) 2. Facilitator briefs Participants – in what way does the passage reveal a key Human Value? What is the name(s) of that particular Value?
B) Facilitator introduces background on Tribal people living in India and the issues of landlessness and poverty. B) Self-guided study: Participants 1.Participants Review Principles of Earth Democracy (Vandana Shiva) 2.Identify challenges to realization of these Value(s) by Tribal peoples Sources of Information/Places of Inspiration: Group Discussion: Discuss real places which might reasonably inform Participants and prepare them to help explore and witness principles of Non-violence e.g.
Sacred places Learning institutions Demonstration areas -- museums, forest centers, etc Workshop areas Home based study areas Volunteer action centers Organic growing areas Fair Trade entrepreneurs
Approach: Each Participant describes an area he or she has visited or experienced, and indicate how it has touched him or her or someone known to him or her. Put it on a base map of the world. Sufficient detail to be presented to locate the area on a Google Map, with sufficient description that others may choose to visit.
Conclusion:
Review the list of Values identified from Gandhi’s work Recall why these Values are important Resume the Principles of Earth Democracy Reconstruct the Actions recommended by the Participants as useful to advance these principles “Intelligent Road Map” showing Places for related exploration and discovery Evaluation of exercise
Servas Certificate
The following document is saved in JPEG format. It can be opened with "Microsoft Paint".
In the paint program (or other program which can view JPEG files), the name of the person can be added; the Servas members' [Servas Britain, Servas Ghana, and so on] name can be added, as well as the national secretary's name.
This can be accomplished by using the "Type" function of the program. You can then type directly onto the certificate.
See : http://www.servas.org/siexco/index.php/Image:Servas_Honorary_Life_Membership.JPG
Servas 60th Anniversary Preparation Kit
Checklist for Successful Servas 60th celebrations http://www.servas.org/siexco/index.php/Image:Briefing_Servas_Anniversary.doc
Servas 60th Celebrations Communication Tools
Downloadable posters : http://www.servas.org/siexco/index.php/Image:Servas_Poster_1.pdf
http://www.servas.org/siexco/index.php/Image:Servas_Poster_2.pdf
Downloadable bookmarks http://www.servas.org/siexco/index.php/Image:Servas_Bookmarks.doc
Downloadable Servas Logo : http://www.servas.org/siexco/index.php/Image:Servas_Logo.JPG
Downloadable Servas Power Point presentation. Note due to the large file size, it is considered "malignant" - it is the way that this site is structured. I have repeatedly scanned the file, it contains no virus: http://www.servas.org/siexco/index.php/Image:Servas_at_60_-_Short_Presentation.ppt
Help For Travellers
Handy Help for Travelers
- Travel Report Form very useful to have ideas of difficulties while travelling and for "rating" host list quality.
Translation Group
- Kit for success (in English)
- Manual del exito (documents translated in Spanish)
Logistics Team
Resource Materials for Binder
Test for Stephen
Servas International is a network of national Servas groups.
Some member groups of Servas are registered charities.
France Servas
Servas France is a registered charity. http://www.servas-france.org/
Servas Germany
Servas Germany is a registered charity.
http://www.servas.de/cms/index.php?menuid=22
Servas Ireland
Servas Ireland is a registered charity.
Servas United States of America
Servas US is exempt from Federal Income Tax under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code and is incorporated under the Laws of the State of New York. Contributions to US Servas are tax-deductible. For more information please see :http://www.usservas.org/about.html#fin
Servas Peace Course
Application form: Peace Course Application Form
Flyer Servas Peace Training 2010
The Servas Peace Training Experience is a course that is intended to help participants recognize and develop their personal goals for peace and develop the tools they need to implement regional and international peace projects. This course teaches people to become effective ambassadors for peace and to go beyond personal projects and become trainers or peace team leaders in their home communities. This course offers an exciting opportunity to discover new country, to see amazing places and make new friends.
Pictures of GA Hosts
Servas Congo Brazzaville
Congo Brazzaville Celebrates International Youth Day August 12, 2009, French Only
Congo Brazzaville Newsletter French only
Congo Syle Programme
Draft Syle Programme Conga 2009
Project Syle Programme Congo 2009 - French Version
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Educational Workshops
Servas Peace Building Teams -- the New Servas 4-Part workshop series
- July 27 Introduction, Guide, Toolbox in one document still a rough edit Peace Builders Guide
Espanol
Servas South America Congress
Servas South America Congress Report
Servas Israel Presentations
Servas Israel Presentation Part 1
Servas Israel Presentation Part 2
Servas Netherlands Meeting
Application Form Servas Netherlands
Description on June 2012 Servas Netherlands Gathering
Servas Congo Brazzaville
Rapport_Activité_servas_Porte_ouverte_Brazzaville
Report of the Activity Servas Open Doors
Meeting with David Schwartz
Impressions from Servas Meeting with David Schwartz
Message from UN Secretary General on Women's Day
Servas Turkey Live with Us, Share with Us
Live With Us Share with Us English document
Congo Brazzaville
Donnons le sourire à nos enfants sinistrés
Give a smile to our children victims
Servas Malawi
Servas Malawi Host Report 2012
Servas Malawi Newsletter No 27 June 2012
Servas Malawi Newsletter No 26 October 2011
Servas Malawi Newsletter February 2011
Servas Malawi Newsletter January 2011
Servas Malawi Newsletter November 2010
Servas Malawi Newsletter November 2009
Servas Malawi Newsletter July 2009
Servas Malawi Newsletter May 2009
Servas Malawi Newsletter November 2008
Servas Malawi Newsletter January 2008
Servas Malawi Newsletter July 2007
Servas Malawi Newsletter July 2006
Servas Malawi Newsletter February 2006
Servas Malawi Newsletter June 2005
Servas Malawi Newsletter April 2005
Servas Malawi Newsletter November 2004
Servas Malawi Newsletter October 2004
Servas Malawi Newsletter May 2004
Servas Malawi Newsletter January 2004
Servas Malawi Newsletter October 2003
Servas Malawi Newsletter June 2003
Servas Malawi Newsletter March 2003
Servas Malawi Newsletter June 2002
Servas Malawi Newsletter November 2001
Servas Malawi Newsletter June 2001
Servas Malawi Newsletter April 2001
Report from Rio +20
Dialogue with the President
Dialogue between the President of the 66 Session of the GA with NGOs
Servas Israel New Years Holidays
Servas Israel New Year and Events
Information about Servas Member Georgia
Information about Servas Member / Country Georgia
International Day of Non-Violence October 2 2012
International Day of Non-Violence
Israel Negev April 2013
media:Servas_Israel_meeting_in_the_Negev_2_-_7_April_2013-4-.doc
