Non-profit status and anchoring of virtu - al workcamps in the local community How can volunteering be incorporated into virtual pro- jects and how can such projects be integrated into the project location? These were questions we all found hard to crack. We have yet to find any approaches that are perfect, but we have come up with some examples that point in the right direction.
“The advantage of a virtual workcamp is clearly that participants get to see each other again and together initiate small, sustainable projects, like translating the flyer. Unfortu- nately, we only had a few participants, but pro- duced more results than expected: The flyer was translated into three languages and an inter- active map with photos of Aach past and present was put together. Everyone really enjoyed the evening they spent cooking together.” Beat Seemann (group leader)
A. Virtual Workcamp in Aach (IBG)
Overview
Project term and location May 2020; four online sessions within the space of eight days; two to four hours each day; individ- ual work between the online sessions. Countries and participants Six participants from Germany and Mexico who were already familiar with the German village of Aach after having previously taken part in in-per- son workcamps. The participants from Estonia, Japan and Italy cancelled at short notice. Educational team Supervision/support provided by the local com- munity in Aach and one volunteer group leader. Digital tools Zoom, WhatsApp, Animaps.com (for the interac- tive maps; note: tool no longer available) Brief project description IBG has been organising international in-person work- camps in the small western German community of Aach for several years now. They help to improve the local infrastructure and provide the community with new intercultural ideas. After the workcamp that had been planned for spring 2020 had to be cancelled at short notice, in May 2020 the volunteer who had been IBG group leader in previous years and the local mayor to- gether initiated a virtual project in cooperation with IBG and invited all those international volunteers who had previously attended workcamps in Aach to take part. All those who joined in were thus familiar with Aach and in- dividual local actors on account of having taken part in previous in-person workcamps. IBG hoped to be able to transpose into the digital setting that aspect that is typ- ical of workcamps, namely participants’ integration into the local community.
The virtual project involved translating a flyer about Jew- ish life in Aach that provides an overview of historical and present-day Jewish sites in Aach into English, Span- ish and French. At one participant’s suggestion, an inter- active map with old photographs of the village was put together. A joint cookery evening via a videoconferenc- ing tool provided an additional opportunity for exchange and the chance to get to know each other. The big advantage of this approach – the fact that the international volunteers already knew the project loca- tion and local actors – also proved to be a disadvantage. Although this enabled some enthusiastic locals to be drawn into the project, it became repeatedly apparent to all those involved that virtual meetings are only an in- adequate substitute for in-person exchanges and were by no means as good as past in-person projects. Claudia Thielen, mayor of Aach, said that there were many small things that made her aware of this. “For example, I didn’t know how to properly thank the participants for all their work at the end,” she commented. Previous in-person workcamps were often rounded off by an intercultural evening during which volunteers and villagers cooked together and had a party, exchanged contact details and gave each other small souvenirs of the joint project. In the virtual setting such personal leave-taking and thank- yous were relatively brief and impersonal.
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