Rudi HASELAARS
I am from Belgium, from the Dutch speaking North-East part, near to the border of Holland.
I live in a town with 35000 inhabitants, in a former coalminers city. The last mine closed in 1992.
The youth-centre is an independent non-profit youth intitiative for 15-25 years old boys and girls.
The youth-centre realises an average year-budget of 7 million Belgian Francs, which means we are one of the 'biggest' clubs in Belgium. We are member of the Flemish Federation of Youth Clubs, who provide training and advice for volonteers and professionals.
One million, or about 15 percent of the year-budget, comes from the state and the local government. About 5 percent comes from project fundings or sponsoring.
Nowadays we are trying to have a structural grant from our regional government, the province of Limburg.
We rent the building since 25 years already from the local government Very cheap, but we have to pay for all costs as repairing the roof, electricity, insurances, water, heating and maintaining the building. The building is getting older which means always more material problems and costs.
Every month we organise a party to have incomes and this realises on the same time certainly a low entrance for new young people. From wednesday until sunday we are open as a 'noisy pub' from 7pm until 1am. Friday and saturday it can be 3 am. The club-volonteers are running a bar with beers and softdrinks with democratic prices on the list.
Every week we organise at least one activity, which is starting from the initiative and dynamic of the young people themselves. The professionals try to animate and stimulate their ideas and give some practical advice. We realise also good PR-contacts with press and broadcasting media as local radio and television.
And don't forget the internet-medium ...

Club 9
Albert 1 laan 39
B 3582 KOERSEL-BERINGEN

0032-11-426251 phone, fax, answering machine.

As a professional Youth Club Worker, I work together with two paid workers (partly paid by government, partly by the youth club), and about 50 volonteers in different workgroups: organising rock concerts, band coaching, rehearsal room, techno-music-dance parties, performances, drive-in-movies, sports als rugby, rollerskating, skate-boarding, city-trips. And exchanging projects !
We try to give the responsibility as much as possible in the hands of the young people, we believe it is important to start from their own wishes, and to help them to develop as much as possible self-initiative.
Learning by doing, by giving them chances to have positive (and negative, that's life!) experiences by organising things for other youngsters.

We have also services to the youth as a copy-service which is open at night and during the weekend, screen-printing room (posters and T-shirts), and we run our own pub - with Belgian beers ...and good music!
one of our aims is to give the opportunity to have access on the internet. Already 4 years ago we invented and builded ourselves our first NET-O-MAAT. This is a machine which you can compare with a videogame. If you put a coin on it, you get automatically and fast access to the internet during one half hour.
Our 'dream-team' wrote the software to link the hardware with the software timer. Be sure, everything is safe for hackers...
Nowadays our project builded already 23 such NET-O-MAAT-machines for Flemish youthclubs.
We also provide trainings on the theme of the internet, for youngsters and for youth club leaders.
The newest product is a smaller version, the JIP-O-MAAT, especially made for Youth Information Points.

We would like to organise exchangings for young people (15-25 years old)
Maybe we can work together if there is a club or school or project which can build the NET-O-MAAT for other youth centres in their own country. We can give some instructions and teaching the know-how during an exchanging project, and afterwards they can work under our licence.
First we would like to have a short study visit to prepare the exchanging with the leaders.
There is also a possibility for one or two creative volonteers to participate on a longer time-period in our club or NET-O-MAAT-team.
It would be interesting if he or she should stay at least for 6 months, and had some knowledge about the internet, for instance building websites, DTP.

More online information:
club9@tornado.be
http://www.tornado.be/club9