FSL India’s LTV team, Kundapura organised a Mid-Term Evaluation for our Long Term Volunteers. The program was held for 3 days, from 19^th-21^st February 2020. In total, 28 volunteers from AFS, EG and IJGD took part in this evaluation. The MTE was organised at FSL India’s Centre for Experiential Living, Shettrakatte. The objective of the MTE is to ensure that the volunteers understand about their project, host family and the intercultural acceptance through evaluation and to help participants to prepare themselves for their future actions.

LTV Kundapur team organised many different activities on the first day. We discussed the volunteers’  expectations and fears, the challenges faced by them and how to stay motivated. We also conducted some games for group bonding and some energisers. In the evening, the volunteers had a one-to-one meeting with their coordinators

It was a smaller group than last year. This time, Ms Thea Karl from AFS visited our Evaluation programme. It was nice that she was with us all the 3 days. After the 1^st day, we all visited the famous Sowkoor Car festival with our AFS buddy, Ms Thea. So, it brought energy to all our volunteers and they participated in the big Temple Car Pulling ceremony, with more than 300 people. All the people were very happy when the volunteers joined the ceremony.

The second day began with energisers after Mr Ragland explained about the outlook on the future and their 4 months’ plan in India. This was followed by an open forum, where they discussed their future plans in Germany after this volunteering service and what they had learnt through the intercultural exposure that they had in India, so far.  All these discussions made volunteers to strengthen their motivation for their remaining days in India.

On the third day, the session was very interesting. The volunteers had to talk about a situation where their Indian Host Family reacted differently than a German family would have, their understanding on the differences in reaction, what they learnt about the local culture from their host family and in what way they were able to influence their host family. The challenges faced by them were also discussed and possible solutions were suggested by the FSL India LTV team. During the open discussion, details about the summer projects and holidays were shared, as also the Final Evaluation details. All the LTV staff felt the evaluation was successful, in spite of a few challenges faced

Finally, the program finished with the volunteers’ feedback:

• Relaxing time
• Do an outdoor activity together
• Language courses
• Support and help
• Make the activities faster and closer together so we have more free time at a time
• Awesome food
• Initiated schedule extra co curricular things  after session
• Nice people.