European Solidarity Corps - Volunteering Activities

Project Description
Stadtbibliothek Dornbirn

Voluntary Project: Stadtbibliothek Dornbirn

Number of volunteers: 1
Project duration: 02.10.2023 – 30.06.2024

Project Topics:
• Creativity and culture
• Community development
• Education and training
• Literacy and media

Contact (where to send the application):

Name: Susanne Sparr

Email: [email protected]
Phone: +43 (0)5572 52212-24

Hosting organisation:
Stadtbibliothek Dornbirn, Dornbirn, Austria

Supporting/Coordinating organisation:
aha – Jugendinformationszentrum Vorarlberg, Dornbirn, Austria
Project description:

“Stadtbibliothek Dornbirn” is one of Western Austrias‘ (region Vorarlberg)

largest public libraries. The new building was opened in January 2020 and is
full of discoveries for young and old. The library makes over 60.000 media
available to a wide audience, including books, CDs and DVDs, magazines and
games – both analog and digital.

Beside these offers, you can visit the library to read and browse through books
and magazines, enjoy some fair-trade coffee or use the technically fully
equipped study rooms. Furthermore, the new building includes a Gaming Zone
which not only offers a variety of Nintendo Switch games but also hosts
Gaming Tournaments. The digital offer ranges from e-books and e-audios, to
the movie streaming site "Filmfriend” and the “Pressreader” for newspapers
and magazines.

Our volunteers work in close coordination with the team in all operational
areas. Those are customer contact when lending books, answering questions or
providing general information as well as supporting the media inventory or the
team in the production of events.

All volunteers experience the

cultural world in Vorarlberg
during their stay. They peek
behind the extensive and
diverse work of a library and the
cultural partners in the region.

Being a volunteer at
Stadtbibliothek Dornbirn is an
experience, it provides a chance
to work independently and to
learn more about the work with
different media and different
people of all ages and
backgrounds.

Tasks of the volunteer:

The volunteer will work five days a week, 34 hours a week including German
course. S*he will have two days holidays per month.
The volunteers’ main focus is the library for children and young people. Here
they are offered a space to become creative themselves. It’s possible to
organize workshops, activities, discussions, projects with and for teenagers; the
list is long, and except for budgetary constraints there are no limits to
creativity.

However, this is an offer, not a must, and volunteers can always choose to
support the team with their daily tasks as well, instead of taking on own
events. We take our volunteers seriously as experts in being young and invite
them to help us choose with media, books, mangas, films, CD’s, etc. are going to
be acquired for the youth library.

In the daily contact with the young people s*he will increase her*his social
skills and (trans-) cultural competences. By helping with our projects and
activities, the volunteer will learn project management and practice teamwork.

Volunteer profile:

Our volunteers should like to work with kids and youngsters and should be
interested in youth cultures and different media and media topics: literature,
games, analogue and digital media, etc.

They should be interested in communicating with other young people and be

prepared to take the initiative to get in contact with them. They should be
flexible and be motivated to take part in our library work, our activities, projects
and workshops.

How to apply:

Please write a mail with your CV (incl. picture of you, date of birth,...) and
motivation letter to [email protected]. After the application deadline we
will have selection rounds with the staff. During those selection rounds it’s
possible that you will be contacted for further information through mail, phone
calls or zoom.

→ Don’t forget to add the name of the project when you apply for it!
Practical arrangements:
The volunteer will live in a student housing, where also other volunteers,
students and residents from different backgrounds live. The housing is
organised by the hosting organisation. S*he will have a room with an own
bathroom ensuite and share a kitchen and common rooms with the other
residents.

The infrastructure with trains and buses is very accessible and frequent and
additionally, s*he will also have a bicycle at her*his disposal. The volunteer
will receive a ticket for free use of any public transport in the whole region of
Vorarlberg during the complete time.

Support during the voluntary project:

Close support is important to us. The volunteers are not only mentored in
finding their way around the library, we also provide access to activities, to
important addresses and contacts in the Vorarlberg region.

The volunteer will have regular meetings with her*his tutor in our organisation
to talk about the development of the project, task assignments, general
wellbeing, problems, wishes, etc.

The Supporting/Coordinating Organisation will hold a monthly evaluation

meeting with all volunteers in Vorarlberg. At the end of the project, we will
together with the volunteer evaluate the project, what s*he has learned and
which competences s*he has gained and as a result fill out the Youthpass.
Furthermore, there will be a final personal evaluation meeting with the
Supporting/Coordinating Organisation.

Related links:

Website:
https://stadtbibliothek.dornbirn.at/

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/stbibdornbirn/

Project description on the European project database:

https://youth.europa.eu/solidarity/placement/33737_en