An interesting concept: a national conference, also accessible to international guests by developing concurrently an international programme in English . The focus was on civic internships, or service learning, MaS (maatschappelijke stage)for short in Dutch, a recent development in the Netherlands. It was one of a series of activities held within the programme of the NL tour of the European Year of Volunteering.
A tour organised to provide volunteers with an opportunity to exhibit their achievements, meet one another, share their concerns with citizens and convey their energy and enthusiasm and discuss key issues for the future of volunteers.
But what is MaS ? This was how it was explained to the international audience: a mandatory 30 hour school-based (community) service for all secondary education students (12 - 18 years), regulated by Dutch law. It's often NGO's which offer these civic internships to students, 195,000 all in all, from around 650 schools ( head locations) and 1950 sublocations. A quick calculation leads to 6 million hours of service done each year !
Many fine examples and achievements were demonstrated and discussed in separate rooms for the many (Dutch) participants ranging from students and teachers to internship agents and non-profit organizations.
The international guests could listen to talks from Spain, Germany, Croatia and the Unites States, showing a rich caleidoscope of examples of how service learning is implemented in their countries and the way it was developed.
Intriguing question for discussion afterwards was: what was the spark for the beginning of the initiative to get service learning on its way ? was it a volunteering starting point or an educational one ? Responses amounted to partial answers and comments but no clear comparisons, nor definitive conclusions. This highly informative part of the programme ended with an appeal to keep on examining, documenting and researching how service learning is developing.
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