Volunteering
in Romania
This is the final report from RURAL INTERCULTURAL EVS project in Craiova- Romania that foresaw many volunteers from different parts of Europe.
Associazione Agrado was glad to be partner in it and we thank a lot Pasquale, our EVS volunteer, for his curiosity and passion and Silvia, from the Hosting Organisation Soroptimist International Craiova, for her care!
Seven
young volunteers decided to have a journey in an unknown land, very close to
Transylvania. To help, to grow, to experience and to have a lot of fun.
It
was what the “Rural intercultural” EVS project was for Monika, Bojan, Kubra, Emine, Semih, Ceylin and Pasquale, who
left Macedonia, Turkey and Italy, to work with children and youth in the south
of Romania.
They
had the chance to explore rural and urban areas, to see contrasts, to bring
their support where it was most needed.
I
give you their experiences, to inspire you on your own journey:
Kubra:
During
my project after ı visited rural schools and saw that they don’t have enough
opportunities and don’t know a lot of things about the worlds but still they
can struggle with these poor conditions, ı told myself that ı should learn a
lot of things and improve myself to help them better.
In
my future I’ll use my experiences that ı got in EVS. If ı struggle with any
problem ı’ll remember how ı managed to
handle with my problems during EVS.
My
volunteering experience helped me to become more active, more flexible and open
towards new ideas by other people. I became more creative with all the
activities, but also I learned to take risks and cope better with it than I
used to do. This whole experience made me aware of the importance of young
active people in the community, working on projects and setting examples for
others. It gave me a bit more of an idea of what I would like to do in my
future and that I could use all the connections that I made with other
volunteers for future projects.
Monika
I
gained a lot of respect and understanding for other cultures, by this
experience I became open-minded and learned how to be patient towards
differences and find solutions easily. This will help me in the future as I
develop even more because I want to work on projects more actively,
collaborating with people from other countries.
Also,
by helping the teachers and working with the children I saw that I influence
them in terms of opening their horizons towards new cultures, towards being
active in their community and also encouraging them to learn English more
actively by making them see it is something that will improve their
communication skills and possibilities in the future.
This entire seven
months process has been a learning experience for me. Starting from an
everyday-life informal learning, which was unplanned like the culture, the
cultural differences, the lifestyle, to all of the non-formal education that I
gained through working with children, helping the teachers in their work,
making crafts, organizing workshops, and to the formal education which came in
a form of Romanian language classes. By all this I became aware of my personal
ability to learn, the best ways to do it and that the non-formal way of
learning suits me best, so by this I saw the difference in the learning styles
between what I experienced so far in the schools that I studied and at the
university. I
also
learned how to organize better while learning or working in order to give the
best of me and gain better results.
Bojan
Many of the stereotypes that i had about
Romania were quickly changed by meeting new local people from Craiova and
Romania in general. They helped me in every situation needed and they guided me
to the right direction, just to fit in to the society better.
The teachers were amazing because they were
letting the kids do what they want without setting some sort of boundaries.
They were extremely creative with their paintings, crafts and any other activities
that we were doing. They looked and felt free. That is what i enjoyed the most
about working with them
This experience helped me to overcome some
fears that i had such as speaking in front of strangers or a large crowd, it
made me more aware of organizing my time more efficiently and i increased my
punctuality. It made me realize how important it is to meet all the people
involved in the project and beyond, because maybe those people can help you and
be a factor in something in your future, you never know what can happen.
I became more creative and more open minded when it came to the activities that we were doing with the kids. I learned not to be afraid to take risks, that it was okay if we made mistakes or not being afraid to ask if something was unclear.
Over all, this experience helped me see myself in a whole different perspective and position that i never thought that i would be in. And it made me realize how much powerful the youth can be.
I became more creative and more open minded when it came to the activities that we were doing with the kids. I learned not to be afraid to take risks, that it was okay if we made mistakes or not being afraid to ask if something was unclear.
Over all, this experience helped me see myself in a whole different perspective and position that i never thought that i would be in. And it made me realize how much powerful the youth can be.
Pasquale
I
developed a quite impressive number of social contacts here in Romania during
my EVS. I have been very curious towards the language spoken, the culture and
the different style of life. I realised how important is to build a truly
European citizenship and how this can overcome conflicts among different
culture. EVS is a great program that fosters integration across and outside
Europe. I met new people and made new friends outside Europe.
Ceylin
Romania
was my first abroad experience. I was a little scared before I came here.
Different cultures, different people… it was hard to adapt at first. But there
were Turkish friends at the building where I stayed and they helped me adapt. I had the chance to
meet many foreign friends. Because of this I developed my foreign language
learned new cultures.
The
biggest contribution of this project to me is the knowledge I gained about the
autistic children, people in need and school children at the villages. This
helped me organize activities such as fingerprinting, play-dough. We prepared
food and gave away clothes to people in need. We organized activities in the
village schools’ as well. Being able to learn, help, and see the smile on the
faces of these people made me really happy.
Let’s
do great things together! Let’s EVS!
