FSL-India’s LTV team, Kundapur organised a Mid-Term Evaluation for our Long Term Volunteers. The programme was held for 3 days, from 20^th-22^nd February 2019. In total, 35 volunteers from AFS and IJGD took part in this evaluation. The MTE was organised at FSL-India’s Youth Centre for Experiential Living (CEL). 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 different activities and sessions on the first day, related to their expectations and fears, challenges, motivation and finally, an open discussion. We also conducted some games for group bonding, and some energisers.

The second day began with energisers after FSL-India’s Deputy Director, Ragland explained about the outlook on future and the next 4 months’ plan in India. This was followed by an open forum, where the participants shared their plans after this service in Germany and what they have learnt through the intercultural exposure that they had in India, so far and also shared their feelings. All these discussions strengthen their motivation for their remaining days in India.

The 3rd day’s session was very interesting. Each volunteer had to explain about a situation where their Indian HF reacted differently from what 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 had been able to influence their host family. The volunteers listed out the various challenges they had faced and the solutions they had found with the help of the coordinator. Finally, the programme finished with the volunteers’ feedback. In the open forum session, we discussed about the volunteers’ summer project, shared the formalities for their flight back to Germany, gave details of holidays for the summer and end of their stay, announced the final evaluation date of AFS/IJGD volunteers and the upcoming program dates.

The LTV staff at Kundapur consider this evaluation to be a success and here is some feedback from our volunteers:

• The accommodation is very clean
• There is a perfect balance between the Program and Free time
• The flowers were a very nice idea
• Nice people and good food
• Sharing and listening to all presentations and thoughts concerning what we have learnt was very helpful/inspiring.
• Thank you for this time