It has been quite a long time since I hosted some friends EVS volunteers the last time. It was a pure pleasure then to welcome my Spanish friend and spend afternoon on guide touring around Bergamo with him! Even though the weather was not the best, the city presented itself very well and made a great impression on Adrian. His biggest astonishment? How much Bergamo is green and how big citta altà it has! 😉
They say that every project has its weak points because simply it’s not easy to plan everything to work perfectly during one year. More important thing than fixed plans and ideas about the project is the ability to observe, analyse, discuss and suit it to the current needs. But the essential part is, as I now know from my personal experience, speaking openly about any kind of problems and issues on daily bases, not waiting for the better moment or freer time or that the problem will be solved by itself. Because it will not and instead will only accumulate with others and create a mess, the one that I had recently. On the other hand, any kind of disagreement is a perfect occasion to stop, look back, analyse and ameliorate. It opens the eyes and purifies the atmosphere, just like a storm after sunny, or even a bit too sunny day.
In my case these were not clarified issue about free days, not entirely precised tasks and roles of the volunteer and coordinator, lack of time for discussing, maybe also a lack of courage for discussing openly. This all led to the critical situation between me and my coordinator when after a moment of anger and not proper expression of negative feelings we managed though to sit in a calm ambience and speak about all those things that haven’t worked well. On the other hand, when else to talk about such things if not during the sixth month – a half of the project?
Below, you can see the methods we used to facilitate our conflict management discussion. We firstly marked silhouettes of Blob which reflected our feelings, then we named the feelings writing them on post-its, finally we pointed out weak, problematical points of the project and proposed solutions. Now the only thing needed is to turn those solutions into actions and see if they work and how they work in practice!
With some notes under arm and experience in head and heart I set off again to share some information about Erasmus+ programme with the high school youngsters of Bergamo. Trying to pass my non-formal education energy, I used a contrary method – this time it was them presenting chosen actions to their colleagues in the light of the idea of peer to peer education. After my short self-presentation and introduction, we formed four groups which, after obtaining papers with the basic data on Youth Exchanges, Training Courses, EVS and Youthpass, were discussing each action and later on presented in English (since it was an English lesson) to the rest of the class. We also obviously mentioned the differences between formal, non-formal and informal education and categorised our recent experiences that we learnt into those three groups. 50 minutes passed quickly but fruitfully and, from what I saw and heard from the others, quite enjoyably 🙂
My blog in English, SantAlessandro articles (http://www.santalessandro.org/category/giovani/vieniviaconme/) in Italian, now also site of my sending organisation Salezjańskie Stowarzyszenie Wychowania Młodzieżey (http://www.dominiczek.salezjanie.pl/index.php/category/wolontariat/helena-chamier-gliszczynska/) in Polish, occasionally the website of my non-formal group Sławek&Friends (http://www.y4u.pl/index.php?lang=en&dir=news) in both Polish and English… These are all the places where you can read about my project! Enjoy and follow the updates! 🙂
It was a weekend with a timetable in front of our eyes. From Thursday we hosted three of our friends from Denmark and France not only to show them the beauty of Bergamo but mainly to work. Work on what? On the Youth Exchange 4D – Discover, Do, Dream & Dare which will take place in Bergamo between 18 – 26 July and will bring young people from Italy, Denmark and France together, some of them with sight or hearing disabilities, together. Before every Youth Exchange there is an APV – Advanced Planning Visit during which leaders of the groups meet together and discuss face to face the organisational, methodological and logical details about the week and see the venues of the project. And believe me, discussing a whole week, hour by hour, is not a piece of cake! Fortunately, it’s already the second edition of the project so leaders could profit from their previous experiences and their good partnership.
For me personally, even if I won’t be able to participate in the Youth Exchange much, it was a nice experience in terms of meeting old friends and observing them working together very well. Yet I miss being involved in projects too!
The last English lesson in Boccaleone was a kind of a crowning of our short yet quite intensive series of meeting since we brought to light the last Youthpass competence – a competence of communication in foreign languages. We revised nationalities, some “trap” vocabulary and false friends of English language and for the nice and interesting end we went through some onomatopoeias in different languages and some things you should and shouldn’t do in certain countries. Everything not only to improve our linguistic competences but also cultural ones. Just because language without its culture simply does not exist!
Thank you all for an active participation and wish you lots of motivation in further discoveries of the English language! 😉
Et voilà, the third note of my authorship for SantAlessandro. Today about the need of promotion of my project and Erasmus + in general. http://www.santalessandro.org/2016/04/il-servizio-di-volontariato-europeo-unesperienza-bella-e-contagiosa-parola-di-helena/
Another week of the project la settimana della convivenza has passed. The objective of the project is for the youngsters coming from different communities for minors of AEPER to taste how the “adult”, autonomic life looks like. The previous one, even if preceded by a little fear of mine, was an amazing time shared altogether and developing other beautiful, full of care, sides of me and all the participants. This time was a little different, simply because the participants were different. Personally, I also didn’t have that much time as previously to devote to girls to pass time together, I got sick and had to stay more in the bed rather than going out for a pizza with them. I tried to give as much as I could even though I knew it was just a little of all this that they needed.
Anyway, I hope that at least amazing Sunday spent at the lake of Lecco will remain in their memory as much as it will remain in mine! 🙂
The third meeting of my English and Youthpass lessons’ series gathered four, willing to discover something more about English language, guys. This lesson was chilling and easy as we spoke about interpersonal competence and a cultural awareness. We learned how to describe people – their appearance and character as well as own feelings, likes and dislikes. At the end we reviewed a photo description rules and managed to converse quite much together!
The last lesson will be a cherry on the top – the competence in foreign languages as a sign of developed competence of the English language. I’m preparing something special, so stay tuned! 🙂
I was honoured to be able to represent EVS volunteers on the national event of 20th anniversary of EVS in Rome in March. The other opportunity by which, thanks to the Italian National Agency, we had a chance to present our project again was during the Study Visit of the representatives of the Arab countries of the Mediterranean Sea basin. The project organised by the Italian and Austrian National Agency and Salto EuroMed had the aim to depict the reality of EVS structures, organisations, accreditations and so on in Italy and Austria.
We were the first stop on the 4-days travel of participants through north Italy and Austria. After a short energizer and introduction, in the garden with a full sun on our backs, we presented the AEPER organisation, its history of working with international projects and then my EVS – my motivation, the main activities, advantages and disadvantages… Later on, having a plate with tiramisu prepared by one of the girls of comunità in one hand, we heard the boss of Comunità L’Aquilone speaking about the practical and formal information of the community as well as my impact as an international volunteer on this specific group of youngsters. The visit ended with a tour in the rooms of community and our volunteers’ apartment. It was short yet very intensive, fruited with many questions and interest of the participants and at the end, many nice gifts from their countries given to the comunità.
My myself, I was very very happy to host such an enjoyable event in my place, in my house and apartment even. I felt international projects’ atmosphere which I miss so much and could listen to the Arabic language for a little while. I also met a Jordanian friend with whom I used to work on the projects for few years, with whom I have many friends in common, and yet haven’t met on live until today – two days after a project in Jordan to which I sent a group of my friends and haven’t had time yet to speak with them about their impressions. He was the first one who told me how it all went, while staying in my room! I love such stories so much as they are a perfect example of that it’s not the Europe that is small but the whole world!
sharesharing 