The Austrian Abroad Service is a licenced holding organisation, which gives Austrians the opportunity to carry out 12 months of voluntary work (either in the form of memorial service, social service or peace service) abroad. The time you spend working in this manner is recognised as community service by the government. With deployments on all five continents, the Austrian Abroad service is the largest licenced holding organisation recognised by the Austrian government for community service.
The holding organisation is in charge of sending the Austrian Servants Abroad of our organisation abroad. The work agreement is a contract between the Austrian Service Abroad and the holding organisation. I. e. the employment and social security are covered by the holding organisation. After having served the 10 months of community work at the holding organisation you will not be required to do any additional community work. Alternatively you can also work abroad at the organisation on a voluntary basis.
The Austrian Abroad service is just one of a number of holding organisations offering community or voluntary work abroad. There are two other noteworthy organisations offering community work substitutes: The Memorial Association (this is another organisation not to be confused with the memorial service we offer) and the Never Forget Association, such as other smaller associations.
The services that you can do at the organisation Austrian Service Abroad are as follows:
- Memorial Service: You will study the victims of National Socialism and work in holocaust memorials, museums and research institutions.
- Social Service: Social service workers attend various international development programmes all around the world like ones that fight poverty, provide education or sanitation as well as work at environmental institutions.
- Peace Service: A Peace service worker works on projects that aim to secure peace in areas, which are/were in crises.
Your first contact is always the tutor of the state you live in. You can either contact them via Email or directly apply by filling out the application form. To get additional information, feel free to join the monthly state-meetings of you state. Their contact information as well as the latest events can be found in the new applicants section. You should only contact the organisation’s chairman, under most urgent circumstances, since he is a very busy man. NEVER contact the deployments yourself!
With the 1.1.2016 amendment the social substitute service was integrated with the voluntary service. This means all persons will be eligible to do social service via the Austria abroad service who:
- speak German, since they would not be able to attend conferences, state meetings and get prepped properly.
- Applicants have to be Austrian citizens and/or live in Austria.
Most of the deployments are occupied almost 2 years in advance. To increase your chances of getting your desired deployment spot we recommend applying as early as possible. For each period there is a deadline, which you can find here: application page. Applications sent in after the deadline will not be processed by us.
After sending in your application to the Austrian Abroad Service you will get the new applicant status (NA). After that point in time you will have six moths to get accepted into the organisation as a full member. Usually that amount of time proves to be more than enough. More information on how the Admissions work can be found in the new applicants guide. Additional questions can be resolved by contacting your tutor or at the state meeting, were more senior members of the organisation will be present. After attending the state meetings and a number of conferences, as well as creating a CV and getting in touch with all persons of importance in the organisation, there will be a admissions interview held. If passed successfully, you will be a full member of the organisation.
The biggest concern of the Austrian Service Abroad organisatioan is, to prepare their upcoming servants abroad as good as possible towards their target employement sites. To the individual preparation belongs besides the attend at some events also the creation of a learning agreement and the participation at our online-conferences.
- Once a month a departement meeting takes place in every federal state. Furthermore the communication in our association used to happen by programs like Adobe Connect, Podio and Skype.
- Wednesday-Conferences: to the biweekly Wednesday-Conferences we always have a prominent guest with us to discuss subjects concerning the memorial-, social- and peace-service.
- Area-conferences: a monthly conference for every area (mostly a continent or part of it) . At this occasion upcoming servants abroad get informed by present servants abroad about their future employement sites and their particularitys.
- Travelling in the departement: given that the organisation doesn’t suplly salaried employees, it is dependent on the voluntary work of the candidates. Every candidate has to work in a departement, which are also detaining monthly conferences.
Principally a voluntary service is done non- paid. However the state provides appropriation to covering essential payments. Closer informations about funding and appropriation can be answerd by the tutor in charge.
At a duration of 10 months the voluntary- service can be valid as civil- service. It hasn’t to be fulfilled anymore in the inland.