Looking back over my shoulder…

I can feel you’ve all been holding your breath for a new post. Well, first of all people may ask themselves what’s my role as an EVS volunteer. What am I doing here? Where am I volunteering? To answer these questions, I am working for an association called Jeden Świat, which is the Polish branch of Service Civil International (SCI). It is a non-governmental organisation, which promotes a culture of peace and mutual understanding by means of international voluntary projects, local initiatives and programmes of education.

As an EVS volunteer I work with children, at the kindergarden Na Bosaka in Puszykówko, and with the Roma kids living in Poznań. Apart from that I take part in a Language Club once per week, and I spend time at the office.

As soon as I arrived in September I was sent to do a training in Puszczykowo (a small village 20 minutes away from Poznań by train), and I was grateful for it because I discovered a universe I was unaware of, the web of SCI trainings and workcamps and the great people involved in it. This is a video on that training, made by the lovely Katerina Zaryuta. The training was called Trade Fair and it focused on unicorns…kidding, it focused mainly on peace activism and human rights.

In October I had my on-arrival training in Warsaw. During an EVS project, a volunteer is supposed to attend two trainings, one at the beginning of the project (called on-arrival training), and one half-way through the project (mid-term training, which I will attend in April). The training was held at the hotel Agrykola near the beautiful Łazienki Królewskie park.

The participants were young people from all over Europe doing their EVS in Poland, and we spent five days discussing topics related to EVS (like motivation, conflict resolution, how to organize activities), learning some Polish, and discussing more  bureaucratic stuff, like insurance. We played many games and did lots of energizers, and ate a lot as well…the tea/coffee breaks were numerous (and so were beer breaks in the evening…)!

Stay tuned for more!