Training Centers for International Volunteering

New Horizons Training conceives international volunteering as a highly innovative experience: it is both experiential and theoretical and it is based on sharing life experiences, on service, on mutual help, in order to learn about oneself and the others.

The reasons that lead people to do a voluntary experience at New Horizons centers are different: from vocational thrust to the desire of better knowing one's dynamics, from situations of hardship to the desire to do something good for others. Social, economical and cultural classes differ, as well as age and life experiences do.

Everyone is offered a training course for both volunteering and the assumption of our charisma, which is founded on 4 pillars:

• Fraternity
• Occupational therapy and job training
• The path to self-knowledge
• Spirituality.

The "house" is the first fraternity site. It's the place of small things, of community life at a family dimension. We live together in small groups (4 to 8 persons) split into men and women. Groups are very heterogeneous: that is how you begin to deal with the others.

Usually each group has one or two people who have more experience at New Horizons and can be considered as "elder brothers/sisters" by the others, but in fact there is no one that has the role of "trainer" or "psychologist"; living together and sharing one's own store of positive and negative experiences to help each other growing up.

In a world dominated by consumerism and the logic of disposability, the simple and essential style with which we live helps to restore the correct value of things, it stimulates the material and spiritual sharing, it leads to the discovery of the other and it teaches how to ask for help.

In fraternity they concretely and simply assimilate the style of gratuitousness, of caring for the others, of dedicating and sacrificing according to the typical style of voluntary activities.

On this basis, we build a solid and specific work experience, functional to the areas of service and support to the different vocations of our work. Volunteers are actively included in the areas of service of our community (prevention and awareness, communication and mass media, publishing, international cooperation and social services, hospitality, entertainment and performing arts, etc…) and trained in specific work tasks, paying attention to the talents they've individually already developed (qualifications, skills, professionalism, etc..), as well as their still submerged aspirations and talents. The synergy and transversality among the different areas of work are also realized by their coexistence within each center, thus allowing volunteers on training to keep their eyes open throughout the whole work of New Horizons and to develop a sensibility and to focus on all fronts on which the community commit themselves.

Work experience has a high therapeutic value too: in fact occupational therapy is the second pillar underpinning the training process of the volunteers. Compliance to the schedules, confrontation with the "authority" represented by the leaders, carefulness and sense of responsibility all represent the aspects of daily life that identify and correct unhealthy attitudes that often characterize our life of social relations.

Another pillar of the educational journey is the path of self-knowledge, which is realized through the "New Horizons program". It uses both theoretical notions and self reflection together with moments of sharing in small groups. Through it, the young volunteer is conducted in a fascinating and mysterious journey to his inner self, discovering the dichotomy between his ideal self and his real self, being often cause of conditioned choices and existential discomfort. All this is fulfilled with the journey of spirituality, centered on the Word and the prayer which can be seen as the driving force of the whole educational experience of each volunteer, permeating all aspects and giving it a sense of value. The combination and complementarity of these training components generate the conditions for a mature choice of gift, a responsible and authentic one, made in freely and for free.