The SPJ

The SPJ is a youth organisation accredited by the French-speaking government of Belgium (FWB). We were founded informally in 1967, but have been a non profit-making organisation since 1977. We are the Youth Commission for the United Protestant Church in Belgium (EPUB) and are committed to training young folk from all backgrounds to be active citizens (CRACS - Citoyens Responsables Actifs Critiques et Solidaires). Our main target group is 13-18 year-olds, but most of our activities are open to people up to (and sometimes beyond) 30. We have recently begun organising holiday camps for children from two and a half years. Our main sectors are the youth training programme for which we are also accredited by the government, different short-term training modules and holiday camps for children and young people. We hosted and sent our first international long-term volunteers in 1982 via a partnership that was to become EDYN - the Ecumenical Diaconal Year Network. The Diaconal Year itself was founded in Germany a few years after the second World War with the goal of rebuilding the damage that was suffered. Since the pilot programme of EVS in 1996, SPJ has been part of all the international volunteer programmes offered by the EC, exchanging an estimated 200 volunteers over the years, averaging 15 young people a year in the hosting programme. Our hosting placements are all in the social sector, in children's homes and residential institutions for disabled adults believing that working and living in such environments promotes empathy and understanding. Our sending programme is significantly smaller with only a few volunteers per year. The SPJ team is composed of seven employees, two full-time : a coordinator (for the whole of SPJ) and a secretary (also for the whole of SPJ); five part-time : a teacher on secondment responsible for "animation" (who also speaks Italian), a historian/librarian responsible for training, a qualified artist responsible for communication, a qualified teacher and former volunteer (who speaks French, English and German) and a person with 20 years' experience in the job, a former volunteer, who speaks French, English and German.