WORLDWIDE FRIENDS (WF)
The Road to
environmental and cultural Awareness
Five years is not a
long time in the life of an organization and in the middle of June this year
Veraldarvinir celebrated the fifth anniversary. During those five years, more
than 1.300 international volunteers have visited Iceland to participate in
different projects all around the country. We are grateful for their work and
we are proud of what they have achieved. In June 2001 when Veraldarvinir was
established, the board of directors made a strategic plan for the years 2001 -
2006. The two main goals to achieve were set:
1. To build an organization cooperating with
local communities around Iceland and international partners all around the
globe.
2. To promote peace, understanding,
environmental and cultural awareness through voluntary work and peace fostering
projects.
We have reached those
goals in general and now we are ready for the next steps.
The main goals for the
period 2007 - 2011 are the following:
1. To improve the over all quality inside
the organization with more focus on Peace fostering activities and educational
value of our work.
2. To strengthen the infrastructure, human
resources and capacity inside Veraldarvinir and to increase the number of
active members up to two hundred.
3. To secure the financial situation of the
organization
We are proud to be
members of the Veraldarvinir team and we want to thank all the volunteers, our
partners abroad and the local communities for the cooperation and their
contribution to our work. We also want to thank the EVS volunteers and the
Leonardo´s which stayed with us during the last years - they will always have a
special place in the soul of our organization.
WF Iceland - Aims and
Ideology
Worldwide Friends (WF)
was founded in 2001 as a non-profit organisation promoting nature and peace
oriented activities for volunteers wanting to spend some time in Iceland. We
host short-term voluntary workcamps, long-term voluntary projects (6-7 months),
seminars (suitable both for young people ad adults), and Youth Exchange
Programmes in Iceland. We also send Icelandic volunteers intending to have
similar experiences abroad. Veraldarvinir/WF works with three main aims:
* To promote
inter-cultural learning, exchange and awareness
* to care for
Icelandic nature and raise awareness of environmental issues
* to promote voluntary
work and a culture of volunteering
Our primary activity
is organising workcamps. A workcamp is a place where people of all races,
ideologies, and nationalities can live and work together for two weeks on a
project hosted by a local community. Our camps take place during the summer
months and have between 10 and 20 international participants who volunteer,
socialize and work with local people. They are a multicultural, voluntary team.
Projects are either environmentally or culturally based and we are always open
to new ideas. Environmental projects work in a variety of areas, all of which
are nature-orientated, including,
* Building hiking
trails to protect nature/landscape
* Working in forestry
areas
* Cleaning
beaches/countryside
WF works with many of
the local communities in Iceland and on an international level we are
associated member of the Alliance of European Voluntary Service Organization
(www.alliance-network.org)
and we cooperate with similar organizations all around the globe.
Clean Up The
Coastline-Project (2007 - 2011)
In 2006, WF Iceland
started the preparation of the biggest
project in it's history and this year we are going to launch the project. In
the next five years we are planning to clean the entire coastline of Iceland.
It's a very ambitious project, but we are sure that we can manage to carry it
out in a sucessful way. In this project, we are cooperating closely with
several other partners: The icelandic ministry of environment, the farmers
association, The association of local authorities in Iceland, The University of
Iceland, several schools, youth groups and non for profit organizations, and
off course we also include our workcamp participants to work in this project.
We will have one Leonardo-trainee, that is especially assigned to take care of
the "Clean Up The Coastline"-project and also we will host six EVS
volunteers which will be highly involved.
The coastline of
Iceland is 4.950 km long and the Atlantic ocean brings a lot of garbage to the
coastline. We will pick all the items that can be removed by hands and we will
also make a electronical map where bigger items can be located. The plan is to
remove them in the following years.
General Information
about our workcamps:
Minibus option
There will be a
minibus option for all our camps. It means that we are renting a minibus to
bring the participants to and from every camp. The participants can choose by
themselves if they want to join the minibus option. The fees for the minibus
will be published in the infosheets. However, they will be cheaper than public
transportation in almost all of the cases. Every participant that takes the
minibus has to let us know before the workcamp starts.
Accommodation in
Reykjavik/Keflavík
We are going to offer
a basic sleeping bag accommodation in Reykjavík/Keflavík for all our
participants. They can sleep there before and after the camp. Unfortunately we
cannot offer the accommodation for free, but we are offering our participants
the smallest price possible.
Participation fees
In the last years we
have collected a participation fee from our incoming volunteers to cover the
running costs of the projects and also the overhead of the organization. The
reason for this is the fact that the concept of a workcamp, were not known here
in Iceland when we started our first camp. Now when we are in the beginning of
our fifth season we can say that we have managed to introduce this great
programme to almost all local communities here in Iceland and they have learned
to appreciate the work, the cultural differences and the atmosphere that our
volunteers are bringing to their daily life. We are proud to be considered
pioneers in this field here in Iceland.
Today we are ready to
accept volunteers on the same basis as other European organization, without a
fee "unless for special workcamps". The 40 camps that you will find
here below are founded by local communities, governmental institutions, local companies
and individuals which are willing to contribute for the cause of a decent
voluntary work and a successful workcamp. We are thankful for this and we hope
that the volunteers will appreciate it as well.
Study theme
In many of our camps this
year we will certain study theme:
Our main focus will be
on Environmental issues so in twenty of the camps the study theme is:
"Global warming
and new energy - Our climate, our actions, our future"
It is necessary to
take action on a local level to help address this very global issue. Although
climate change seem like a complex issue there is a wide variety of simple
actions that every individual and community can take to make a difference.
Energy conservation, educational programs, planting trees, walk to work and
waste reduction. Those actions are just few of the possible options that we can
choose from in our daily life.
Iceland is also a
country with lot of potentials in so
called "New energy"
We want to raise the
awareness of our campers and the local communites about those issues and
hopefully they will get some knowledge from our study sessions.
In three of the camps
the study theme will be "The hidden people, alfs and trolls" and in
one camp we will have the study theme "The Icelandic Saga".
General information on
this country can be accessed via any of the following websites:
Library of Congress country studies … http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/
US Dept of State country background pages …
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/bgn/
CIA Factbooks …
http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/
National newspapers online via Internet
Public Library
… http://www.ipl.org/reading/news/