Estonia - Narva

Estonia

 

Name the most significant social problems in the community?

• The most significant social problems in our community: lack of youth engagement in the community, lack of affordable social housing for young families, lack of family orientated places to go and things to do, dysfunctional families, alcohol addiction. Intolerance: Estonian and Russian minorities (Narva is almost fully populated by the Russian- speaking minority.) A lot of non-citizens: people don`t trust the government (low turnout on the election). Locals are not willing to voluntarily take actions in order to make their hometown better, voluntary work on making a difference is not popular, which probably originates from really material values.

How can the volunteers participate in helping to solve each of these issues?

• They can work with children and fire their interest in learning languages and spread the culture, new life in the city, new ideas, and promotion for non-formal education. To teach young people from the early age to understand that they are a part of the community and they also have responsibility for environment around us. This job could be done with collaborations of volunteers and teachers from kindergartens and schools. The affordable housing can be addressed to the higher level by volunteers gathering information and statistic (survey) about poverty within young families. Volunteers could also find potential investors by gathering and sharing community needs. Even creating a commumity café all based on volunteers. Make a place for unemployed people where they can be helpful for the community in exchange for something but money (for example if person was an electrician and he could help some old lady with his service she could pay him with fruits or vegetables she has grown in her summer house). Just be a good person and tell people who you are and what you do here. Ask people how they feel about their nationalities living in their hometown, make them reflect on what reasons why they( or their friends, family..) have a such attitude towards others.

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Cambodia - Chambok

Cambodia

Name the most significant social problems in the community?

• Gender inequality
• Lack of access to education because many children do some sorts of small jobs to support their families and don’t have time to study because of that or the families are not able to pay for school supplies

How can the volunteers participate in helping to solve each of these issues?

• Teach English
• Raise awareness

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Cambodia - Sneng Commune

Cambodia

Name the most significant social problems in the community?

• Health
• Education

How can the volunteers participate in helping to solve each of these issues?

• By sharing their knowledge and show them how to take good care of their health and how to be well educated

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Honduras - San Francisco de Yojoa

Honduras

The 3 most significant social problems in San Francisco de Yojoa are:

• Emigration: a variety of domestic factors, including a lack of economic opportunity, are driving people to leave the country, mainly settling in the USA, Canada and Spain.
• Remittance Dependence: many families receive money from family members living and working abroad, causing that some people who receive remittances have an incentive to reduce their own labour because they know that their relatives working abroad will send them money regularly.
• Family Disintegration: some factors causing this are parents migrating abroad due to high unemployment and underemployment; lack of education; lack of a loving, supportive environment within the family; macho attitude of wanting to have as many children as possible; among others.

How can the volunteers participate in helping to solve each of these issues?

• In order to contribute to the solution of these issues, volunteers could participate in organising different activities that promote an entrepreneurial mind-set together with children, youth and their families. Fostering key qualities of entrepreneurship such as creativity, the ability to keep going in the face of hardship, and the social skills needed to build great teams. These activities could at the same time, help family members to interact with each other, and analyse together how to resolve community problems, focusing in local solutions rather than pursuing a life abroad. Entrepreneurial thinking can strengthen rural businesses and reinvigorate an entire community.

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Ireland

Ireland

Ireland in brief

Mexico - Xpujil y Sanahcat

Mexico

Name the most significant economic problems in the community

Xpujil:

• Lack of employment
• The precariousness of existing employment
• Shortage of services and basic products

Sanahcat:

• The lack of jobs and therefore of economic solvency causes families to take loans which are impossible to pay. leaving them with high debts
• The need to search for a safe market for the sale of artisans
• Lack of support for traditional agriculture

How can the volunteers participate in helping to solve each of these issues?

Xpujil y Sanahcat:

• Involving yourself in ongoing projects.
• Procuring funds from your geographic space
• Support in the translation of specific documents.

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Slovakia - Kysuce

Slovakia

How can the volunteers participate in helping to solve each of these issues?

• Meeting people from other countries helps the local community become more tolerant and open-minded. 
• Show the community that there are different opportunities to act differently with people in the surrounding and start an international dialogue.
• Encourage them to change their behavior and try to motivate them to open their mind and become more active at local level.

Name the most significant social problems in the community?

• Although the region Kysuce is on a crossroads between three countries – Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic, the people are only slowly becoming open to foreigners and a lot of them have prejudice against the unknown. These feeling often come from the absence of opportunties to meet foreigners or people of other races, religions etc. Therefore, the need to raise the European awareness and fight against prejudice and xenophobia is a very important part of our EVS project. 
• Homelessness and alcoholism
• General apathy and small-mindedness

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Vietnam - Cau Giay

Vietnam

Name 3 most significant social problems in the community?

• Air pollution
• Traffic jam
• Chemicals used in vegetables

 How can the volunteers participate in helping to solve each of these issues?

• Volunteers can share their experiences, practices in their countries about these related topics. Seminars/workshops on this can also help with awareness raising.

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