A handful of short-term European volunteers recently finished their one-month volunteering project in Timișoara. Below, there are some of the testimonials about their experience.
Georgia: This voluntary project has provided me with many opportunities. First of all, the opportunity to visit Romania and discover its astonishing culture. It also gave me the opportunity to learn more about other countries since I have been living in an international environment for a month. I also acquired skills in organizing activities and actively participating in the community. Besides, this project helped me develop and gain confidence. I started this as a way to challenge myself and overcome my limitations and I think I was successful!
The most important thing I have achieved this month is a wonderful international family in which everyone respects and cares for others. Spending time with them has helped me so much that I can’t even count. I’m very grateful to them and also to the old me who had the courage to apply and come here.
Yarek: This project gave me the opportunity not only to make new friends and be involved in a local community but also to learn many things about the Romanian language and culture. Working with the youth of Timișoara was a great experience for me. We learned how to plan, organize and promote events, how to break stereotypes and live in a diverse international community.
Mathilde: Coming a second time to Romania after a first volunteer experience was very challenging. But the FITT community was very friendly and the volunteers I was with were amazing! I had a lot of fun with everyone and organizing activities at the youth house was difficult but awesome. We lived and worked together as a family, and I loved that!! I got one of the best experiences in Romania!!
Pamela: Coming to Romania and volunteering at FITT is one of the best things I’ve ever done. Through this volunteer project, I learned how an NGO works, how to organize activities and how to involve youth and the whole community in those activities. Overall, it was a wonderful experience where I had an opportunity to meet new people and learn more about Romanian culture.
Pedro: I don’t think there’s much I can say about what I experienced at Casa Tineretului (Youth House) thanks to FITT. Nevertheless, I would be happy to share some things which, probably, are a bit more deeply into my international soul. Volunteering at the FITT not only made me realize how important non-formal education is but how much we need human support throughout our lives. I think all of us have been empowered by each other and have achieved things that we never expected to achieve. We have created well-organized workshops for random people in a country we hardly know. We promoted our work using different selling techniques and we made gold from what looked like silver.
Overall, we all gather in Timisoara and have found the best of us. The organization worked as a bridge and mediator among us all, but we were the ones who worked together to achieve our own goals. They gave us the river and the boat. It sounds easy, but we had to go with the flow and pedal together. If you just go with the flow, you risk crashing, if you work and put all your strength on the pedal and change the direction you are going to get to see it.
For many other humans the 26th of April of 2022 is just the simple “ National Pretzel Day” or the ordinary “ Hug An Australian Day”. For all of us, known as the “short terms”, is not just that, but the day we started a new adventure in which Europe is our mother and Romania our land.
This day we legally started to be part of a Team Volunteering. A European Solidarity Corps type of project which aim is to gather people from all around the world and make them do some changes in the local community.
This touchy introduction has nothing to do with the extressefull first days of our adventure. If you are a person living in society you would know that beginnings are always difficult.
Matilde (one of our volunteers) said: I was feeling in a complete neutral mood, not happy or sad, just trying to figure out who my life was going to be for a month.
Thanks to the previous volunteers, known as the “long terms”, everything became easier and easier. They were these humans the ones that offered us everything when we had nothing, even some of them picked us up from the Timisoarian airport. They helped us to find ourselves in the biggest palace we have never lived in. An ex sovietic building in which it is impossible not to get lost, unless you walk with a “long term”.
After meeting part of our new family in the volunteers (shorts and longs), we had the chance to meet the other part of our new family members, The FITT team. A workaholic group of people that will work as much as needed in order to flourish the youth center.
Once you know your family, it is good to spend time with them and build a relationship, and that is what we did for the first days. What better place to gather than in a barbecue. Thanks to the extremely typical traditional romanian barbeque we learned that, without mici +mustard the world has not a complete sense.
Our family (Short terms, long terms and FITT workers) worshiping 2 of our more beloved volunteers.
And finally, everything seems to have settled down. We have a huge home full of huge people doing nothing, no, not at all. Well… it seems it is time to talk about what we did and how we did it.
The first activity we did all together was a flash mob. But not the extremely cool Flash mob in which everyone starts dancing, but a relaxed one. Called freeze Flash mob. I do not think I have to explain the term. The point of this pacific way of expressing ourselves was for the Timisoarian inhabitants to see that there are still public places that can be used to educate society in a much more non-formal way.
Yaroslav (a short term) claimed: The flash ove was the perfect way to meet people from the local community who want to do something powerful and useful for the society.
Pamela (a short term) adds: It was interesting to see that we can change the world without words. It was a freeze flash move in which we were not talking. Just by stopping in the middle of the street saying nothing, conscious lots of the inhabitants.
Another wonderful activity we did is promoting. We are promoters, we share content on social media, we distribute international flyers, we flirt as much as we can in discos. To sum up, we love our youth center to be known. The more the people know about casa Tineretului, the more alive the building is and the more we can contribute to society.
There is also physical work in our schedule. In one of the activities we took care of one of the youth houses we have by cleaning it and remodeling it somehow.
1st photo: cleaning one of our multiple youth centers
2nd photo: Communal hug after the flash move
As you can see, we are not just volunteers, but members of a family, promoters, architects and much more. Let’s see what Romania is preparing for us.
6th of May Friday.
Being a volunteer in FITT is not just about working hard to make the world something better, but to enjoy life.
On that Friday, and after working hard in Dacia (one of our favorite youth centers), we had an impressive party at the hallway of our home. We met lots of locals at the same time and for the second time, after the pacific protest. And we could enjoy their culture and share everything that makes us unique.We joined, without noticing, the promotion of the intercultural festival for university students from all around the world.
We were a little bit scared of what could happen that night. Our idea was to go to bed early because we were planning to go to the capital of Serbia, Belgrade. At the end, we gave up trying to sleep and we did a, what is called, “Shot and Serbia”. It is a Timisoarian concept that allows you to go without sleeping to another country outside of The European Union.
The Serbian trip is another topic. It is sad how two countries (Romania and Serbia) that are so culturally similar and share their borders, are so difficult to access from one to another. To reach the capital we needed to go to the Romanian border (Moravița) , pass the border by taxi and, once in Serbia, split. Some of us went hitchhiking to the capital and others went first to the nearest Serbian city Vrsac (by hitchhiking) and, there, took a bus to Belgrade. Going to Belgrade was a wonderful challenging experience.
Once there we succeeded in finding the cheapest hostel in the city and enjoyed the Serbian typical traditional culture. We were eating 24/7 and enjoying the powerful neverending Serbian nightlife.
This was the trip that made us a family and created in us the feeling of protectiveness towards each other.
We fell in love so much with the kindness of their people that it was hard to come back to Romania. Not just because of the sadness, but because of how hard it is to cross the border again.
After visiting another country in Europe we were motivated enough to celebrate the
EUROPE DAY on the 9th of May. During This day we promoted FITT in the best way we could (remember we are professional promoters).
We enjoyed it as Europeans do, but not everything was perfect. Some of our volunteers wanted to share this.
“I liked the activity in the city center because I felt very involved in the team but I did not like the promotion of my country because I felt like they were advertising the French institute instead of my culture.” Mathilde
On the same day we had the “human library”, an activity that took place in Casa Tineretului based on the idea of people becoming books. Basically, each of us had a title and we prepared a speech about our cultures, our volunteering experience and some stereotypes about families in our countries.
“I didn’t like the fact that the living library was not so successful because it was a big opportunity to discover more about every culture that was represented there, and people did not seize it.” Giorgia
Even if, as one of our colleagues said, it was not successful, we had time to reflect about the place we were born in comparison with the place we are volunteering in. It was really powerful for us to see how we need each other, in the way that difference means vitality. If we want to become a story with a happy ending, we need to learn from people around us and from humans that were born in different contexts than us, this is the way we can enrich ourselves.
From the beginning of this week, and after Europe Day, our main focus in FITT was creating workshops for Friday and Saturday, and promoting them during the week. During the next lines we will focus on the intercultural evenings and leisure time, but this doesn’t mean that we were not promoting our activities smartly.
Apart from the cultural facts we experience with others, we learned life hacks that Europe brings us. There are lots of opportunities. Apart from European Solidarity Corps (team volunteering) we learned about opportunities like “Youth Exchanges” or “Training Courses”. We could see how they work with our own eyes as a youth exchange project called “Go green or go home” was taking place in our house. This was the perfect opportunity to enjoy the different cultures in intercultural evenings. We met people from Romania, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Hungary, Philippines, Portugal, Brazil and Ukraine. We danced with them and tried their food and drinks.
After learning how “intercultural evenings” work we were brave enough to start our own traditional dinners.
The first brave ones were the italians, who made their extremely typical traditional pasta on Tuesday. It was not just traditional pasta but an intercultural one, since all of us were preparing it.
The menu was
1st course: Homemade traditional pasta
Beverage: Italian extremely traditional wine from Profi.
1st Dessert: Tiramisu
2nd Dessert: Italian Karaoke.
On wednesday it was the turn of the Spanish intercultural traditionally typical night.
1st plate
Typical Tradicionals Spanish TAPAS
Jamón Serrano
Serrano Ham
Aceitunas con queso y anchoas
Olives with cheese and anchovies
– Typical Tradicional TORTILLA DE PATATAS
Potatoes Omelette
– Typical Tradicional (more from Asturias but still Spanish) CACHOPOS
Something súper tradicional that don’t have translations in other languages
– For drink: Typical Tradicional Spanish SANGRIA DE VINO
Wine sangria
These days we learned that Casa Tineretului will always be our home because “mi casa es tu casa” as the Spanish say.
We realized this concept thanks to Maria, a previous short-term from Spain who came back here for a week. As she said, we can all go on with our lives but a piece of our hearts will always stay here. She left after the Spanish night and we wish her the best of luck in everything, we love you Maria <3.
On Thursday we had Moroccan night, here we have to do a small appreciation post to Ayoub who cooked alone for all of us and made us travel to his Country by printing pictures of moroccan cities and putting them on the table. Also another appreciation post to Nadìa who took part in this intercultural evening.
On Friday some of our workshops took place:
-”Draw your rights” in Dambovita by Pamela, Radu and Giorgia. An activity where one participant draws one of the human rights from the UDHR and the others have to guess which one is it. They took the idea from the Compass and the main objective was to spread awareness about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Milena, Ayoub, Helene and Tomas went with them to help.
-“Game tournament” in Casa Tineretului by Mathilde, Yaroslav and Silvia. During this workshop they facilitated different mini games like kahoot and the guessing of the song.
On this day we also had to say goodbye to the youth exchangers. What better way to do it than throw a wild party in the garage and continue it into the club “D’Arc” . For some of us the night ended with a so-called “powerful nap”.
On Saturday my workmates Milenius and Helenius and I went to the seniors center to prepare our workshop EU(ROPA) . It is not the most inclusive title for the activity as it is only understandable for Spanish speakers. The thing is that we were reusing some old clothes to create new fashion or products for our homes.
Before our workshop some of us went to the gardening and picnic in the lovely Dacia, that youth center in which we are working day and night to give a second chance, to create a home in what is now a Whole abandoned space.
Gardening is really good to know yourself and the people you work with. At the beginning we were all laboring the land individually, until someone realized that it did not make sense to work like that. This person organized all of usl to work together and in the same place to have our planting spot. We did it and in 5 minutes we did more than one hour of individual work.
We had the international picnic and we went to prepare our workshop.
There were various participants who knew, some of them better than us, how to create new out of old clothes and fabrics of all tipe. We all learned together that even stinky and old things need a second chance.
On this night we had the opportunity to go to a concert in Casa tineretului. The band Dirty shirts was playing their hard rock in the most expressive way.
Between Friday and Saturday most of us left to visit other cities, but the ones that remained had also fun going on bike adventures and making homemade pizza.
This day we legally started to be part of a Team Volunteering. A European Solidarity Corps type of project which aim is to gather people from all around the world and make them do some changes in the local community.
This touchy introduction has nothing to do with the extressefull first days of our adventure. If you are a person living in society you would know that beginnings are always difficult.
Matilde (one of our volunteers) said: I was feeling in a complete neutral mood, not happy or sad, just trying to figure out who my life was going to be for a month.
Thanks to the previous volunteers, known as the “long terms”, everything became easier and easier. They were these humans the ones that offered us everything when we had nothing, even some of them picked us up from the Timisoarian airport. They helped us to find ourselves in the biggest palace we have never lived in. An ex sovietic building in which it is impossible not to get lost, unless you walk with a “long term”.
After meeting part of our new family in the volunteers (shorts and longs), we had the chance to meet the other part of our new family members, The FITT team. A workaholic group of people that will work as much as needed in order to flourish the youth center.
Once you know your family, it is good to spend time with them and build a relationship, and that is what we did for the first days. What better place to gather than in a barbecue. Thanks to the extremely typical traditional romanian barbeque we learned that, without mici +mustard the world has not a complete sense.
Our family (Short terms, long terms and FITT workers) worshiping 2 of our more beloved volunteers.
And finally, everything seems to have settled down. We have a huge home full of huge people doing nothing, no, not at all. Well… it seems it is time to talk about what we did and how we did it.
The first activity we did all together was a flash mob. But not the extremely cool Flash mob in which everyone starts dancing, but a relaxed one. Called freeze Flash mob. I do not think I have to explain the term. The point of this pacific way of expressing ourselves was for the Timisoarian inhabitants to see that there are still public places that can be used to educate society in a much more non-formal way.
Yaroslav (a short term) claimed: The flash ove was the perfect way to meet people from the local community who want to do something powerful and useful for the society.
Pamela (a short term) adds: It was interesting to see that we can change the world without words. It was a freeze flash move in which we were not talking. Just by stopping in the middle of the street saying nothing, conscious lots of the inhabitants.
Another wonderful activity we did is promoting. We are promoters, we share content on social media, we distribute international flyers, we flirt as much as we can in discos. To sum up, we love our youth center to be known. The more the people know about casa Tineretului, the more alive the building is and the more we can contribute to society.
There is also physical work in our schedule. In one of the activities we took care of one of the youth houses we have by cleaning it and remodeling it somehow.
1st photo: cleaning one of our multiple youth centers
2nd photo: Communal hug after the flash move
As you can see, we are not just volunteers, but members of a family, promoters, architects and much more. Let’s see what Romania is preparing for us.
