Campleader

The assignment as a camp leader gives you special experiences and strengthens your social skills. The same participation conditions apply to you as to the other volunteers, with the exception of the registration fees, which do not apply to you. In each of our workcamps in Switzerland there is a camp leader who takes over special tasks within the group:

  • Coaching of volunteers
  • Coordinate work arrangement
  • Contact person for Workcamp Switzerland and project partners
  • Application in the environment of people, environment, culture

The prerequisites for this are:

  • You like to take on responsibility
  • You have already managed camps or have similar experiences
  • You are at least 23 years old
  • You speak German and can communicate well in English
  • You are interested in socio-educational tasks

Offer:

  • Board & lodging
  • Campleader management certificate (for applications)
  • Small fee (CHF 450.- for 3 weeks and CHF 300.- for 2 weeks)
  • Social competence enhancement
  • Cultural exchange, foreign language acquisition

Are you interested?

Then send us a short letter (approx. half A4 page) with your registration, in which you describe your experiences and your motivation. Please note that we can only engage you as a leader in the workcamps in Switzerland. The concrete tasks will be discussed in a personal interview.

Gain precious experience as a camp leader

Campreport from Campleader Manuela Christandl«Valle Bavona» 8th July – 21st July 2018

Simon (Belgium), Uri (Catalonia), Bülent (Turkey), Ahmad & Mo. Ali (Germany), Aurélie (France), Angelina (Russia), Zuzia (Poland), Raluca (Catalonia) and me, Manuela (Switzerland) we all found our way to the workcamp in Valle Bavona. There we spent two weeks working and enjoying life together. Our work was to cut fields and uncover stones, stonewalls as well as houses from grass and plants. Special for this valley are that they used to create gardens on big stones. So they transported earth on top of it and created a way up, most of the time inaccessible for animals. Our work included cutting those gardens on top of the stones. Another example of work was cleaning a field from all the grass and camomile except the «sea buckthorn» and «barberry». The goal was to create a specific field just for those plants. On the pictures below you see the place before and after. It was nice that Delio and Davide, the workers, explained for what we do the work and why we cut some plants and others not.

After the sunny, sweaty, strong working days we were of course hungry. Cleto, the restaurant owner, created delicious food for us. Pizza, Lasagne, BBQ, Risotto… and always a salad, as well as desserts. He and his partner Lila were grateful, happy and open minded. Cleto even joined us on Sunday and drove us with the bus around Locarno, Ascona and Bellinzona.

In addition to food and work there was another important part from the workcamp; Activities. Here the participants get to know each other and share their culture and personal stories. The volunteers decided what they wanted to do by themselves. So all the free time we did so many different things such as „BBQ, enjoying the beach, going to the magic Blues festival, going to a bar, swimming in the river or pool, playing beach volleyball and football, cooking together, playing icebreaker games, card games and lots of other games, enjoying the day in cities nearby, renting a pedal boat, giving each other massages, singing and playing instruments, having dinner with locals and lots more. You see every evening and weekend was long and different, as well as intense. Everybody had also their time for themselves. They enjoyed their time in the internet-zone with their family and friends, sometimes left for bed earlier or went for a walk. It was an open group. The idea was whenever the participants were in the group, all were welcomed, no matter what age, character, country and gender.

The best activity in my opinion was the international evening. There we invited locals and all people from the project host, as you can see in the pictures below. The participants created starters, main dishes and desserts from different countries. We had a really nice, relaxed evening. We sang together and played the guitar and drums and in general shared a lot about our lives with each other. After work, dinner and activities we were tired. Everybody knew that we are going to sleep in an underground shelter which was not really a cosy place but acceptable. However, a few of us also slept some days in the open, which was a hotel with thousand stars :D.

To sum up: I met unforgettable people with big hearts. To all I wish they can continue being social, open minded and flexible. Thanks for making this camp so wonderful. Special thanks also goes to Fondazione Valle Bavona, Mariella and Ariele. They put a lot of effort in the whole project and made everyone comfortable. It was nice that they even organised on Saturday a trip up to the mountain with the cable car.