How will the Stand by You Buddy programme work in schools?

The school signs up for the buddy programme through a simple online form and has a responsible person - a mentor/leader/teacher - trained to supervise, motivate and facilitate the buddies in the first phase.

In the first phase, the mentor will create a team of Czech "buddies" from pupils and students of the school, who will help him/her to reach out to Ukrainian students as part of the Volunteering. The young ambassadors of the project will also help with reaching out to Ukrainian students. They will be selected from among Ukrainians already studying in the Czech Republic, who will also help to overcome the language barrier on both sides. Building trust in the project is a key parameter for success.

The buddies will be given the task of preparing the content of the first 8 meetings with Ukrainian students. Subsequently, the first interactive workshop will take place, where Ukrainian students and Czech buddies will be present. The mentor/lead teacher will be given a series of familiarisation activities to be found in the manual. His/her task will be to carefully observe the dynamics of the group and design Czech student-Ukrainian student pairs accordingly if they have not already organically formed themselves within the school. The mentor will continuously monitor that the pairs always meet after a week and reflect on the communication and the shift in activities, in which he will also be assisted by the project ambassadors. The Czech buddy will record all activities with the Ukrainian student in the ORB online application, where the mentor will monitor the activities and progress. The mentor will meet with each of the pair separately after 3 meetings to get feedback from the participants.

In the next phase, once the Ukrainian student has stabilized in the unfamiliar environment, they will embark together on activities in the areas of Physical Activity, Skills, Volunteering, and Adventurous Journey. They will help each other together with the mentor/leader to choose activities they can do in the location. Ideally, they will find an intersection between activities so that there are at least one or two activities they can do together. For example, a Czech student goes running regularly as part of physical activity, so they start running together, even though their goals (running time; length of run, etc.) may differ. Another example of interlinking activities is that the Ukrainian student will be learning Czech, so he/she will choose Czech as a skill. His Czech buddy can help him with this by volunteering as a tutor.

Thanks to this connection, a full-fledged friendship will start to form between the pair. They will spend time together in a meaningful way and enrich each other culturally.

You can sign-up via this link: https://forms.gle/5xrAxrwA4qTrLFF76

In case you need more information, do not hesitate to contact our Project Coordinator, Naděžda Vránová:

+420 720 548 828 | nadezda.vranova@dofe.cz