2020 Young Workers Volunteer Program @ Volunteering in a Kindergarten

The Young Workers Volunteer Program is aimed at young adults who want to clarify career goals and gain intercultural knowledge. People that want to grow personally and gain work experience.

This 12-months program provides you with an easily accessible opportunity for effecting positive societal change through volunteering, while improving your skills and competences for personal, educational, and professional development. Non-formal and formal learning opportunities during the program will enable you to acquire essential competences for personal growth in order to become an Active Global Citizen, thereby improving your employment prospects and facilitating your transition into the labor market.

There are various Kindergarten projects in this program which are looking for young, highly motivated team members to play an active part in their organization and to contribute to the daily work routine of the organization. In Kindergartens volunteers stay and take care of children between 1 and 6 years old.

Normally their tasks are:

• Playing with the children, paint and draw with them, sing, read to them, do sports
• Go with them on excursions
• Volunteers may have to help in the kitchen or do caretaker work to fix things around the house
• Some Kindergartens are bilingual: spanish or english
• Volunteers are welcome to come up with own ideas and express their creativity through activities with the kids

Volunteers’ reports

Helder (2017) writes: “My last months in Germany have been great and I couldn’t be happier with my project, first of all I’d like to say that the placement with my project was great they have been pretty helpful with me in every single way. I feel like I’m having a big responsibility right now, the first days I was learning what the kids do all the time. We receive all of them and greet their parents, then we make the breakfast and after that we do the morning meeting with the children and talk with them a little bit, after that they can play a little bit, sometimes we take them to the park. We continue with the lunch and after it they have yoga or capoeira class, in the end the parents pick them up and that’s it pretty much every day. I really love the job and how it changed my life in only three months.”

Sara (2018) writes: “What I like the most in Germany was working with the kids, I always used to like kids and I thought maybe after working in a place like this I would get bored or not like them that much anymore but it was not like this. I really enjoyed my year here, they are all really nice kids and they made me laugh a lot even when I didn´t have a good day, it´s a good place to forget about your problems outside.”