EVS

European
Voluntary
Service

It is an opportunity for a young person to work as a volunteer and live in another country of the European Union (or eve the world) from 2 months up to a year. You don't get paid for voluntary work, but that's not that important, is it? Because you can travel, see other countries and people, do something important for other people, learn the language and even develop as a person!

EVS is a program of the European Union, which means it is:

• free — as a volunteer you don't pay a dime for the project (not like most other volunteering programs). The project covers travel costs, lodging, food and provides some pocket money for personal needs. It is enough to focus not on surviving, but on the work, benefiting the society;




• safe — as a volunteer, you'll be insured by one of the best insurance companies in Europe, which covers dentist, oculist and even pregnancy costs. Besides that, EVS projects are created to provide a safe educational process during the whole project. Europe takes care of its volunteers;




• useful — it is a work for the benefit of the whole society and individual people, but it's also an excellent possibility to learn. Not the way people learn in schools or universities, but learning by doing, through personal experience. You can learn the language, get new skills, learn to handle your own finances and even decide what to do in life. At the end of the project your learning and experiences are reflected in a special certificate.

Selection criteria — age (from 18 to 30 years old) and motivation to work in the project, will to learn and develop. Most of the time special skills and language knowledge are not required.

Sounds intriguing?

Then let's get to it. An EVS project is a partnership among hosting organization, sending organization and the volunteer.

• hosting organizations write projects and offer vacancies for volunteers;
• sending organizations get accredited and help volunteers and hosting organizations to find each other (but not only). We, JASMA, are accredited since 2008. We communicate with young people and help them find a suitable project, prepare and support them during the project, as well as "integrate" them back into society upon return to Latvia;
• if you want us to find you a project (or maybe even write a project especially for you), then fill out an online form in latvian  or russian . Are you an english-speaker from Latvia? Contact us directly!




You can ask additional questions via email evs@jasma.lv.

In resources section there's a handful of important links on the topic (have a look, it will come in handy ;)