Our partner structures are responsible for the entire process of selecting and preparing the volunteers. All partner structures advertise the volunteer service and ask for (country-specific) application documents. With these application documents a pre-selection of potential future volunteers is made. This pre-selected group of applicants is then invited to a selection seminar which takes three days in most cases. This week-end has the purpose that partner structures and volunteers can get to know each other and have a first exchange. There, the for the time being definitive volunteers that later can start their term of service in Germany are selected.

Each partner structure establishes the selection-criteria itself. However volunteers need to be at least 18 years old. We as „Zugvögel“ withdraw deliberatly from the selection process of the volunteers because we could only look with a „western“ view onto applications and are not on site to get to know the people personally.

In some countries there are several preparation seminars, language courses and close support with help from the Zugvögel after the selection of the volunteers took place in order to master the administrative processes. In one country there is a two-month internship in the partner structure itself instead of a preparation seminar in order to become familiar with volunteer work. However, also here there is support with visa applications etc.

For more detailed information, just visit the websites of the partner structures!