Volunteering Week in Second Chance School

As told you some days ago, Second Chance School has begun its second part of the European Project VOLARE in which the city of Gijón is its main representation, leading a group of six entities, which belong to five different European countries.

So that, coinciding with the Volunteering International Day on the Fifth of December, Second Chance School took part in different activities related to the same theme.

In this way, some of the students that belong to this project visited Cruz Roja (Red Cross) installations that are placed next to the Casa Malva in the neighbourhood of Montevil, in Gijón.

Once there, the Cruz Roja responsible informed our young students about different issues related to the entity: its roots, goals and future projects.

Likewise, a rewarding talk was raised. In it, various issues in relation to the questionnaire content, which had been prepared and agreed by the students with the consensus of the rest of the European participants, were dealt. It will also be part of one of the final publications of the VOLARE project “Discover your City and its Resources”.

However, there is a lot more to tell you about. The next day, our Second Chance School received the visit of an entity called ENTRECANES, an association that works with dogs in assisted interventions, specialised in therapy and education. Taking advantage of the Volunteering International Day, Entrecanes carried out an activity called “Get to know your Talents” with our students.

Through the project, the entity works with the purpose of developing social skills in an innovative way, with the help of a dog. It serves as a motivating and intensifier element that transforms the learning process into an experimental apprenticeship.

In this occasion, an activity about assisted interventions was developed with dogs within the school installations. The aim was to develop our student’s personal potential and so create the necessary competences for their empowerment and active society involvement.

Remember that, Second Chance School is defined as a transition resource managed to favour educational, labour and social inclusion of young people in between fourteen and twenty five years-old that are under a vulnerable situation throughout a personalised itinerary adapted to each student.

The workshop is expounded within the general goals marked by the Second Chance School principles. In other words, it tries to guide those young students that present truancy situations and/or have left their studies and find themselves without any expectations nor particular interests. Moreover, it attempts to form itself as a social relationships area as well as a place where they can profit their time in a positive way. Therefore, that would give them some extra motivation in order to face brand new challenges.

Finally, we would like to thank Entrecanes and Cruz Roja their absolute availability as well as their altruistic contribution for our students and also in the development of the project VOLARE.