In the summer of 2018 the Network of Estonian Nonprofit Organizations ordered an analysis of the feedback to the community practice from the Institute of Baltic Studies, to get a more systematic and thorough overview of the answers gathered by the feedback inquiries ever since. The objective of the analysis was to evaluate what resulted from the program for the participants – teachers, tutors and students.
Community practice is a collaborative program for schools and NGO’s, that takes students to a practice at local NGO, mainly in conjunction with the social studies class. During a period of a couple of weeks, students participate in the activities of an NGO by their own choosing in the course of 10-15 hours, as they witness the functioning of citizen initiative.
The teacher helps the students analyze, what they experienced at the practice, associating it with theoretical knowledge. The tutor of an NGO helps young people understand, why the work of a particular NGO is important for the community. The Network of Estonian Nonprofit Organizations helps in bringing together schools, teachers and organizations and offers support to conduct a practice and analyze the experience.
The conducting of the practice is supported by various guidance documents and materials supporting the analysis of the gahtered experience, which have been developed by the Network of Estonian Nonprofit Organizations. From 2013-2018, about 2300 young people all over Estonia and a total of 31 schools have participated in the Community practice programm. Every year, feedback has been collected from participants. When in the first year feedback was only gathered from students, then in the further years it has also been collected from teachers and tutors.