Sea-Watch is looking for volunteers

Sea-Watch e.V. is a non-profit initiative dedicated to the civil sea rescue of people on the move. In view of the humanitarian disaster in the central Mediterranean Sea-Watch provides emergency aid, demands and at the same time forces the rescue by the responsible European institutions and publicly stands up for legal escape routes. We are politically and religiously independent and are financed exclusively by donations.

Our department Supervision & Psychological Support offers various psychosocial support formats to strengthen our paid and unpaid activists as best as possible during their engagement with Sea-Watch. We systematically anchor sustainable activism in the context of civil sea rescue and promote holistic mental health. To accomplish this we coordinate psychological (de-)briefings, crisis interventions and counselling for our Ship and Airborne crews active in the central Mediterranean. Additionally we carry out measures for team- and organizational development as well as regular workshops to promote burnout-prevention, conflict culture and anti-discrimination work to support our backoffice. All this is made possible by over hundred volunteers all over Europe who support our daily work with their expertise and commitment.

Now we are looking for new volunteers who offer psychosocial support for our activists in the context of…

1) Support for our Ship crews:

• Carry out psychological briefings & debriefings (group setting, online or live in South Italy, in English)

• 1:1 counsellings in different languages

• Scope: Starting from 1-2 hours every 1-3 months plus individual preparation

2) Support for our Airborne crews:

• Taking over at least two talks (one preparatory before & one reflexive after their deployment) in a 1:1-setting

• Willingness to be called by the activist during their deployment if required

• Italian- & French-speaking volunteers urgently needed but not mandatory

• Scope: 1-3 hours plus individual preparation over 2-4 weeks of deployment

3) Support for our Backoffice:

• Carrying out (regular) moderation, team supervision or mediation in English and/or Italian

• Formats are sometimes remote, sometimes live (mostly in Berlin and Leipzig)

• Scope: Usually accompaniment of 2-3 teams per year with a scope of 5-20 hours each depending on their needs and your capacities

Your profile as Volunteer:

• Strong identification with the goals and values of Sea-Watch

• Professional background in counselling, moderation, mediation, psychology or a related area

• Confident doing counselling and moderation in English, Italian, French or Spanish (at least one language)

• Flexibility to react to spontaneous requests (usually within 0,5-2 weeks)

• Resilience to support activists in a volatile and sometimes chaotic environment

• Own experiences with activist or self-organized contexts and/or seafaring are a plus but not mandatory

We offer:

• Exciting insights into the psychosocial support work in the context of civil sea rescue

• A meaningful engagement to support the political fight against Fortress Europe

• Exchange with other volunteer from different backgrounds, professional levels and countries in monthly intervision talks and topic-related exchange (both remote) and our yearly live intervision in Berlin

• Coverage of travel costs through Sea-Watch

We look forward to get to know you!

If you’re now interested in supporting the activists of Sea-Watch we warmly invite you to reach out to us with a short presentation mail. Feel free to tell us something about:

• • • • Your professional and/or activist background
      • Your motivation to get engaged with Sea-Watch and support our work
      • The work areas and topics you are interested in

      • Your capacities and what support you need to become engaged

You can reach out to us via: supervision-volunteers@sea-watch.org

We will review all applications until mid of May and send you then further information on volunteering in our team. If it’s a match for both of us we’ll start your onboarding in May – so you can become active already this summer.

As we are committed to a society without discrimination, we particularly want to encourage people to apply who belong to marginalized groups in the NGO-world.

Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions on volunteering with Sea-Watch, our working realities or barriers connected to this volunteer position.