Project: Volunteering

September 14

Volunteering abroad or in your hometown

Image retrieved from: http://www.makeabignoise.org.uk/volunteering/

According to Wikipedia, Volunteering is generally considered an altruistic activity where an individual or group provides services for no financial gain "to benefit another person, group or organization". Volunteering is also renowned for skill development and is often intended to promote goodness or to improve human quality of life.

Objective: At the end of this project, you will be able to write and speak about places and people.


Situation:  A group of National University students is interested in volunteering in a place where they can help with their knowledge acquired in their University programs or simply help to improve  the conditions of any comunity.

Task:

In groups of 3 or 4, investigate about a country, city or town where you consider you could offer your community service as a volunteer, write a blog about it and do an oral presentation promoting the volunteering among the university community.

In order to search for the best place for you to be a volunteer, you should follow the following steps:

In group of 3 or 4:

1.     Search for a country or city where you consider you could put in practice what you have learned in your major or help others with your talents or interests.

2.     Write a short country/city report

3.     Do an oral country/city presentation describing the place and exposing why you consider it is a good place to go to volunteering (speaking task).

4.      Investigate about your chosen place by answering the following questions:

-        Where is the country/city located?

-        How many inhabitants does it have?

-        How is its culture? Its economy? Its architecture? Its landmarks? Etc.

-        What are its main positive cultural values?

-        What are its main problems to solve?

-        Who is its most representative citizen(s)? Why?

-        Does that person/group help to improve her/his community life style? How?

5.  Write a descriptive text about the place, a biography of a recognized person in that place and an invitation addressed to the university community to participate in volunteering programs.

6. Prepare an oral presentation about the topic

Project Timetable

Date	Task	Product
September 14	Conforming Project teams and selecting the place	Names of team people and possible place
September 28	Preparing a cool country/city report and be ready to speak about your chosen place	Speaking task
October 1-12	Writing the country profile/city description	In group, open a blog or webpage and post your place description
October 12-24	Writing the biography	Post the biography in your blog or website
November 2	Writing the invitation	Write the invitation in the blog or webpage
November 16	Presenting orally the project	Oral presentation of project