Month: June 2018

Right after finishing the project in Baia Mare, we came back to Timisoara and started a new project. Even though it was nice to get to know a bit more of Romania, I was glad I was back in Timisoara and back to sleep in my bed! 🙂

This time, the project called “Reason for Reasoning” was about critical thinking, a topic that I’m particularly interested in. Besides having an amazing topic, the group in this training course was very friendly and fun. Everyone was very engaged, happy to be here, and excited to work with each other.

In this Erasmus+ training course, we learned more about things like norm critical approach, the difference between facts and opinions, the so famous topic of fake news and many others. In the end of the training course, we provided workshops on these matters for young people in the local community, which was a great way to get to know more people and, of course, share what we learned during the previous days.

As the cherry on top of the cake, I got to meet a group from Portugal and (finally!!) speak Portuguese again.

 

 

The next 10 days of my EVS were spent in Baia Mare, a city in the county of Maramures. During these days, I took part on an international training course, developed under the framework of the Erasmus+ programme.

The project, called “Creating a framework for tomorrow’s youth centers”, was a project for youth workers, where we learned about volunteering, management of volunteers, project writing, organizational development, among others.

Of course, during the free time, we got to know the city of Baia Mare and interact with the local community during some of our activities. This city is now the Romanian Youth Capital.

In our free day, in the middle of the project, we spent the day in a lake close to the city, making a barbecue and some of us fishing.

 

These ten days were great not only because I had the chance to know Baia Mare and learn more about youth work, but also because I got to know amazing people, from different countries in Europe that I feel lucky to have met.

The time before leaving Timișoara again was very brief. During these days I worked on a project I’m writing as part of my EVS.

This is a new experience for me, since I’ve never wrote or been in contact with the writing process of a project. Besides that, I chose the topic of gender equality, which I’m very passionate about but still it’s not so easy to approach. It’s a ‘huge’ topic and as I’m writing, I keep having the feeling that something is missing.

Nevertheless, I consider this topic as being of extreme importance and, therefore, is a challenge I want to embrace in order to have a positive impact in the local community when it comes to education and sensibilization.

These days were also filled with a lot of nostalgia. Being the only volunteer in the association tends to get, sometimes, not hard but challenging. Being with other volunteers was good because I got to meet people with the same “role” as mine which was nice and, coming back to Timisoara, I started to miss them. But don’t get me wrong, even though it gets a little challenging from time to time, other times I appreciate the fact of being alone, as it contributes a lot for my development, especially on a personal level – never before I got used to being on my own, which is really important.

Besides all of this, these days were very much about taking advantage of the amazing space we just got in the youth house, with which I’m in love with! 🙂

After finishing the on arrival training in Bucharest, I got the chance to continue to get Romania a little bit more and, this time, I headed to sighisoara with a group of volunteers I met during the training, whose project is taking place in this city. 

Sighisoara is a small city, which I’m usually not really a fan of, but one of the most beautiful I’ve been so far. It’s know for being the hometown of the “Dracula”, something you cannot miss while being there, bearing in mind all the souvenirs with his face on it. 

This small “city break” was also my opportunity to get in touch with a different evs project than mine and, besides getting to know the city, I got to know the youth center and a little more about their work there. 

Once again, the experience with the trains coming back to timisoara was something interesting. This time, I had to exchange trains in the middle of the night and, unlike Portugal, the trains are not saying the name of the station they are stopping next, which gave me a little heart attack every time  the train was stopping somewhere. Lucky me, the company’s worker remembered exactly where I had to leave and appeared in my seat to tell me it was time to change. 

After coming back to Timisoara, Revolution Festival was taking place. It’s (probably) the biggest festival in the city, with 3 of music, art and different activities. I went to the first two days of the festival and, in the third day, we had the inauguration of the space we built/redecorated behind the youth house. So, after a few weekends of work, this space was finally ready and open to everyone. 

The event was really nice, with a lot of people attending and a lot of music throughout the night. It was a great feeling for everyone that worked for it, to see how it looked in the end and how much everyone was enjoying it. It was this general feeling of pride and happiness. 

The week ended with a barbecue to celebrate our work and the new space we’re having in the youth house! 🙂