Strengthened Association Cooperation

– a folk high school stay with a special focus on association life

Do you deal with young people who are passionate about their sport?

Do you know someone passionate, who wants to get immersed in a project to develop your association or region?
Do you want to help equip one of your young association activists to be able to contribute to association life?

Let’s do it together!

Movement, volunteering, community, management and responsibility have always been some of the cornerstones of the Gymnastikhøjskolen in Ollerup, and for us those values are inextricably linked with the Danish sports associations. A strong civil society with active volunteers is a prerequisite for a sustainable and democratic society, and here we perceive the Danish sports associations as playing a vital role.

One of the main values we built our school on is to form to “lift together” and “take responsibility” with sports as the focal point. At the end of the high school stay, the students are given a needle with the letters OD. The D stands for Division Commander, ie the old term for an instructor, and the O stands for Ollerup. But the letters also stand for Word and Deed (Ord og Daad in Danish) – that is, to take action according to what you say.

Pedagogically, we see a huge potential in turning the instructor, volunteer and association part at our folk high school up a notch or two. The potential lies both in a loving opposition to the cultural individualization of recent years, but also as a positive and hopeful grip to lift and take an active part in the future. Mette Frederiksen has just re-established the word “community spirit”, and in many ways community spirit is probably the most important value of colleges to create a school.

We have some really nice and responsible students, so we have the potential and the “material” in our hands RIGHT NOW! They want to help, but often lack the insight, experiences and experience – and we can give them that. That’s why in the last two years we’ve spent a lot of pedagogical hours narrowing down and developing an autumn semester, where you can benefit from sending your young association dynamos to our folk high school.

Invitation to collaborate

Strengthened Association Cooperation is an invitation to you as an association to create a collaboration with the folk high school through one of your young volunteers.

The way to establish the collaboration is by registering one of your young volunteers as a student at the Gymnastikhøjskolen in Ollerup during an autumn semester. Who you choose to send is of course entirely up to you, but we want to create an opportunity for young people who do not immediately have a college in mind, to go to folk high school. It could be someone who is already an instructor with several courses in the backpack, or someone you see a potential in.

Regardless of the starting point, the person will have their toolbox filled with competencies within collaboration, association learning, communication, project management, pedagogy, didactics and communication, which are important building blocks in our association life. In addition, there will be a focus on the history of association life in DK, so you get an insight into and understanding of the shoulders we stand on, and why it is so important and unique to carry on the “work”.

As we want to motivate collaboration, we commit to each other – the association, the student and the folk high school. The following should make clear what we commit ourselves to in this collaboration:

Development of your association / region

The student gets a focus area in collaboration with you, who runs as an overall project during the entire high school stay, a kind of “main task”. Each student at Styrket Foreningssamarbejde will each have their own focus, which they will have weekly project time to work with, of course with sparring and guidance from a teacher.

Examples of collaboration:

• The young volunteer has the task of strengthening and developing the association’s fitness department and thereby opening the association to new target groups.
• An instructor works on a project with the aim of creating community, belonging and retention among the instructors on the regional teams.
• An upcoming parkour instructor will boost the association’s parkour environment and hold x number of events during the season.
• The young association member must be – or become – initiated in the association’s board work and has the task of getting more young people to the association’s general meeting as well as facilitate a process to this end.

As a folk high school, we have no requirements for the form of the project, but we want the student to have the opportunity to contribute to something that makes sense for the student himself and for the association / region – and that personal commitment, responsibility, trust and humanity are the driving force in the process.

Subjects, schedule and special courses

(The form is being prepared …)

When registering, students must choose one of the following courses: Health & Fitness, Parkour & Freerunning, Rhythm & Dance or Jump (Powertumbling, Tumbling X or TeamGym).

The students undertake to choose the subject Future Sports Leader, just as they will participate in our LUP classes (Learning, Development and Perspective – a subject that is in line with their line choice), and they will participate in the international NGO classes.

In addition, they can acquire the following competencies:

• Safe Spotting 1 and 2
• Certified fitness instructor and personal trainer (requires choice of the line subject Health & Fitness)
• Certified parkour instructor (requires choice of the line subject Parkour & Freerunning)
• SvendborgLab (increased bodily knowledge through screening, feedback and training)
• First aid and pool lifesaving

Economy

It is a condition of the collaboration that the association contributes financially to the instructor’s stay. There is no requirement for the size of the contribution.

An autumn stay usually costs DKK 40,575 incl. basic package, but through this collaboration, your instructor can apply for a grant of DKK 13,500 through the folk high school’s foundations. The amount that you and the student (and possibly other actors) must cover will thus be DKK 27,075. This covers five months of folk high school, incl. all teaching, board, lodging, day trips, study trips etc.

In addition, the folk high school stay ends with a qualifying diploma in the subjects, subjects, courses, etc. in which the student has participated.

Please note that you must create a user before you can register if you do not already have a login .

Contact

We hope that with this initiative we can contribute to the voluntary world, which alone and in interaction with the surrounding community enriches, moves and touches the individual and the community.

Do you have questions?

Then by all means contact Jonathan Linde: jl@ollerup.dk