Our sessions take place across Calais and Dunkirk, in safehouses, community centres and informal living sites.

We work alongside other organisations such as Médecins sans Frontières, Collective Aid and Secours Catholique, running sessions in their community centres across Calais. We work in Dunkirk in informal living sites, running our sessions alongside other organisations that distribute non-food items (NFI), medical aid, water, and charging, among other services.

Volunteer facilitator - Duration for volunteers in this role is for a minimum of 6 weeks. Their focus is to support the daily running of Kaleidoscope: planning, delivering and being active in daily sessions and detached youth work. Because of the duration of volunteering they will be active in the monitoring and evaluating the project, as well as being responsible in upholding the highest standards of safeguarding, which involves informing the team of concerns or observations. For more information, have a look at the role description - here.

Volunteer instructor - contributes a week of volunteering, with the sole focus of planning and delivering a specific workshop with which they have some expertise. The themes or activities in these workshops can vary widely (e.g music, skateboarding, drama, circus, textiles, art, DJ, football coaching…). Instructors will also be responsible for safeguarding and informing the team of any concerns they may have, but are not responsible for the daily running of the organisation, nor do they need to focus on monitoring and evaluation. For more information have a look at the role description - here.

Mornings:

• Team meetings - run through of the day

• Planning activities for the session

• Packing the vehicle for the afternoon or preparing activities

Other jobs may include:

• Sorting out any donations

• Social media

• Planning workshops

• Independent development

Lunch

Afternoon:

• Travel to session

• Session delivery!

• Pack down and cleaning, if necessary

• Debrief from the session

Volunteer Facilitators -

We ask for a six week minimum commitment in order to support teenagers that we work with. We believe that some level of consistency and familiarity is important in our work. It can take a few weeks to completely settle into life here and get to grips with our work, so these policies are in place for the benefit of our volunteers. Long term volunteers are extremely valuable to our service so if you are able to stay longer than six weeks, we would greatly appreciate this.

Volunteer Instructors -

We ask for a 1 week minimum, in order to deliver workshops to young people. This is shorter as the role is only focused on the planning and delivery of our workshops that take place for a week once a month.

We do require you to be in contact a few weeks beforehand with the kaleidoscope team in order to plan, get resources and make sure everyone is on the same understanding.

We recognise that volunteering can pose a financial barrier for many, and that living costs during volunteering can be challenging to meet. Whilst volunteers are welcome to find their own accommodation for the duration of their time with us, we offer accommodation in our shared flat for a contribution of €220 for 6 weeks - this works out at around €36 per week and tends to be significantly cheaper than alternative accommodation options!

Ultimately we would love to be able to cover more of the costs for volunteers, but as a small grassroots organisation in our early stages, we currently rely on contributions from volunteers to help fund our accommodation and the subsequent continuation of our work!

For volunteer instructors wishing to stay with us, we ask for a contribution of €36 for the week.

Food: On working days a free lunch is provided by Refugee Community Kitchen. You will need to finance all other meals yourself.

Travel: You will need to make your own way to Calais, and any personal travel that you wish to make throughout the duration of your stay. Any work-related travel will be covered by Kaleidoscope.

Time off: We currently work on a five-day on, two-day off schedule. You will be informed well in advance of which days you are working, and we are happy to deal with requests for further time off on a case-by-case basis.

If you feel that the costs associated with volunteering would be a significant barrier to working with us, please get in touch, as we may be able to provide support on a case-by-case basis.

We work through English, and therefore it is necessary to have proficiency in this language.

However, we are actively recruiting people who can speak other languages. In particular, we would love to hear from you if you speak Sorani Kurdish, Dari, Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Pashto, Tigrinya, French, or German. We also encourage our team to develop these languages by learning basic phrases to help communication and engagement in sessions.

We cannot offer advice or financial support in order to obtain a visa. However, we may be able to provide supporting documents, if required. This can be discussed further in your interview.

Northern France is a challenging place to work for a variety of reasons. The context can be turbulent, and changes frequently. Police brutality, regular “eviction” operations and “hostile environment” policies all contribute to a situation which is borderline unliveable for the young people on the move with whom you will be working. The uncertainty also makes delivering our work a complicated process.

On a social level, you will also be living, working and socialising with the same group of people, and for some this can be quite an intense experience and not suited for everyone. All of the above will affect your wellbeing, and it’s important to recognise that by maintaining a good work/life balance and accessing the support available.

Kaleidoscope recognises and prioritises our team members’ welfare, to ensure that we can all continue to support young people to the best of our abilities. To that end, we understand that it is the director and coordinator’s responsibility to look out for the team's collective wellbeing. But it is also everyone's responsibility to take care of their individual mental and physical health.

Support available :

You will receive check-ins from the director or coordinator. The length of your stay will determine the number of check-ins you have. These are an opportunity to chat about how you're doing, reflect, think about ideas, improvements and challenges you might be experiencing.

We also have access to counselling services called the Refugee Resilience Collective (RRC), who offer free sessions to volunteers working in northern France. This can either be in person or over a voice or video call. It is a useful space to share and offload with someone out of this context about anything that you need to discuss.

Currently, Kaleidoscope works from Monday-Friday, ensuring that the whole team has the weekends off. When volunteering with us, we ask that volunteer facilitators take a minimum of one week break after two months. Please give us a minimum of two weeks’ notice before you take this break! This can be discussed with the coordinator. Exceptions to this rule can be made if a break is needed due to unforeseen circumstances.

Kaleidoscope aims to be an inclusive organisation, and we are very happy to discuss this with you.

However, we would ask you to bear in mind that the environment in which we work is highly inaccessible, in many ways. Some of the locations for our sessions are not compatible with mobility-aids, as the ground is uneven and overgrown or waterlogged. We also work in a fast-paced, frequently changing environment, which can contribute to stress. This may be challenging for some people.

However, this said, if you are happy to discuss your access requirements further, we would be more than happy to see how we can best accommodate your requirements before and during your time volunteering. Please contact us for more information.