Eight months in Romania - My EVS Experience
The last month of the spring arrived. But in Romania is like we have the four seasons in one day. Morning is Spring, afternoon is Summer, evening is Autumn and the night is the Winter. Yes, it is very different than my country Greece and yes, I do miss the sea air especially in the hot afternoons. But I wouldn’t change for anything in the world everything I learnt during these eight months I am in Romania, doing my EVS.
So this month I was inspired by a wonderful workshop a local volunteer did in our youth center about journalism and I would like to present what I learnt this month by taking an interview to myself.
- So please, could you tell us, did you do something this month that you haven’t done before?
Well yes. Actually every month I have the feeling I do things I haven’t done before. This month with another international volunteer, we were going almost every Wednesday in Paşcani, where we did Romanian dances. We learnt how to dance hora and polka. So we will use what we learnt on the dancing workshop we do on our youth center every Monday.
- Did you do any trips this month?
Oh yes! I went twice in Braşov. First with some friends to see the city and the local castles like Bran. And I went again to Braşov but this time to the mountains and I participated on the Mid-term course about EVS. We did evaluation of what we learnt so far and we learned how to prepare ourselves for the after-EVS life.
- How were the activities at the school this month? What did you do and how you felt?
With the others international volunteers, we made two teams of three people and we visited the "Petru Rareş" and the "Ion Neculce" High-Schools. We did with them activities using non-formal education to promote our workshop at the youth center and to promote Cucuteni culture. At 14th and 16th of May we met with some international youth workers who participated in a training course in Iaşi, organized by another organization “Youth Alma”, where our coordinator Mihaela was a trainer. With them we organized some activities in the local schools and in the school at Cucuteni to promote volunteering.
- Did you like the activities on the youth center and do you think the local youngsters enjoyed them?
Yes, I really like them. Every day we had different activities using Arts. Monday we had dances, Tuesday painting, Wednesday hand crafting, Thursday music, Friday movie night, Saturday sports and Sunday boarding games. A lot of youngsters participated and I saw from their reactions they liked it and they were coming every day to our youth center.
- Did you had any difficulties this month?
To be honest it was a bit hard at the beginning to organize ourselves with the activities. We are people from different countries and cultures. For sure the language barriers didn’t help. But every day with the help of our coordinator we work and we did a lot of progress.
- As a conclusion how would you describe the month with a sentence?
It was a challenging month with a lot of mixed feelings, but I learnt a lot of things about the importance of being a volunteer for the community and I met a lot of new wonderful people who I wouldn’t have the chance to meet them if I did do EVS.
By Nikolia Papadopoulou
As you may know, we are hosting at the moment our first EVS volunteer, Nikolia, from Greece. She will spend 12 months with us, helping to develop our youth center and create a more active community by volunteering! Each month our volunteer, Nikolia Papadopoulou will share her experience in Romania through a small report.
Building Bridges is a project funded by Erasmus+, a programme of the European Union. The content of this article is the exclusive responsibility of the authors, and the National Agency and the European Union are not responsible for how the content of the information will be used.
So this month I was inspired by a wonderful workshop a local volunteer did in our youth center about journalism and I would like to present what I learnt this month by taking an interview to myself.
- So please, could you tell us, did you do something this month that you haven’t done before?
Well yes. Actually every month I have the feeling I do things I haven’t done before. This month with another international volunteer, we were going almost every Wednesday in Paşcani, where we did Romanian dances. We learnt how to dance hora and polka. So we will use what we learnt on the dancing workshop we do on our youth center every Monday.
- Did you do any trips this month?
Oh yes! I went twice in Braşov. First with some friends to see the city and the local castles like Bran. And I went again to Braşov but this time to the mountains and I participated on the Mid-term course about EVS. We did evaluation of what we learnt so far and we learned how to prepare ourselves for the after-EVS life.
- How were the activities at the school this month? What did you do and how you felt?
With the others international volunteers, we made two teams of three people and we visited the "Petru Rareş" and the "Ion Neculce" High-Schools. We did with them activities using non-formal education to promote our workshop at the youth center and to promote Cucuteni culture. At 14th and 16th of May we met with some international youth workers who participated in a training course in Iaşi, organized by another organization “Youth Alma”, where our coordinator Mihaela was a trainer. With them we organized some activities in the local schools and in the school at Cucuteni to promote volunteering.
- Did you like the activities on the youth center and do you think the local youngsters enjoyed them?
Yes, I really like them. Every day we had different activities using Arts. Monday we had dances, Tuesday painting, Wednesday hand crafting, Thursday music, Friday movie night, Saturday sports and Sunday boarding games. A lot of youngsters participated and I saw from their reactions they liked it and they were coming every day to our youth center.
- Did you had any difficulties this month?
To be honest it was a bit hard at the beginning to organize ourselves with the activities. We are people from different countries and cultures. For sure the language barriers didn’t help. But every day with the help of our coordinator we work and we did a lot of progress.
- As a conclusion how would you describe the month with a sentence?
It was a challenging month with a lot of mixed feelings, but I learnt a lot of things about the importance of being a volunteer for the community and I met a lot of new wonderful people who I wouldn’t have the chance to meet them if I did do EVS.
By Nikolia Papadopoulou
Building Bridges is a project funded by Erasmus+, a programme of the European Union. The content of this article is the exclusive responsibility of the authors, and the National Agency and the European Union are not responsible for how the content of the information will be used.
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