“The best way to predict the future is to to create it.” – Abraham Lincoln
As you know our journey began a week ago with the community engagement activities, this week we started the actual rebuilding of our center.
This is how it was.
It took us a few days of planning and scheduling before we were ready to go inside the building. Once we managed that we started to identify all the tasks we needed to complete.
Cleaning was the obvious priority, both the outside and the inside. We made a commitment to ourselves and to the community that we would clean the surroundings of the center to show the positive impact we can have on the neighborhood. That meant cleaning not only our garden but also the sidewalks and the parking lot next to our center.
The next on our list of priorities was the walls. They were in bad shape due to the humidity which meant that some parts were falling off. So we made a list of supplies that we will need to clean the walls inside for them to be ready to get painted.
Besides that, we brought chairs and tables to put in the front garden to be ready to welcome people. On that note, we received donations like food and drinks from our neighbors.
We felt like people started to realize and appreciate the change that we are trying to make because some of them curiously approached us to learn more about the project and started congratulating us.
We also had a Romanian volunteer that offered to help us after we approached him during the community engagement activities which is another proof that locals are starting to notice us.
All in all, we had the opportunity to think about and reflect on the impact we are having in this neighborhood and what it means to be a volunteer.
Like last week now you will get the chance to read about our teammate`s perspective and thoughts
Sofia Barata
I came here to do volunteering. My experience so far as been awesome, I’ve met new people and got to know more about cultures and places that I had never heard about.
Last week we got to know the youth center and we did a small gathering to let people see the place and how damaged it was. This week we planned to start cleaning the garden and the walls, so this Saturday people could come and see the differences from last week.
Davud Azizov
“This week we started to reshape the youth center. We had a lot of things to do. Our first and crucial aim for this week was cleaning. We didn’t only clean the building, we cleaned the neighborhood as well (10meters?).
On the other hand, we were not good at community engagement. I mean we didn’t try to talk to people like last week. So we should think and work more about this in order to reach a lot of people. As far as I’m concerned, our efficiency was good enough for the first working week.”
Anahit Gharibyan
“Last week started very difficultly. we faced new problems that never think about. After planning we should go to the building and start the main activities such as cleaning the garden building and start construction. Honesty said it was more difficult than I can imagine. But I love it. When I understand that it can be a useful and lovely place for young people like me it motivates me very much.”
Vasilis Tsalos
“Here we are. It’s almost the 3rd week that we are are in the project and I feel that it was like yesterday. The time passes very quickly, but with creativity, imagination and work. We are in Romania for an important purpose, to create safe spaces for the youngsters of this beautiful city. We have already started this job, that looks like a dream for some. We are responsible for the future of young people. We have to try and to do our best every day. I’m very grateful that I’m here as a volunteer of an intercultural team, with many different colors and hearts.”
Christina Fountou
“This week we started cleaning our youth center. The first time I saw it I thought I would probably take weeks to be cleaned but now I realized that with teamwork everything is possible. I feel that our center is really beautiful and it has a lot of perspectives to become really great with a beautiful yard, I am very satisfied.”
Marietta Tselepi
“How can we actually describe the experiences of 23 totally different people from 23 with different backgrounds? You cannot, the only thing that we can do is try to describe the friendships, the relationships, the bad days and the best days.
This week was strange, people are becoming intertwined with each other we start to become a team. We can understand and we start to actually respect each other. The weird thing is that while we start to understand we sometimes cannot do that with each other’s peculiarities. We dress everything up so nicely that we forget that these few weeks that we will be here in Timisoara we are going to be in a bubble and that in real life we are quite boring and not really that interesting. We try to show our most interesting selves to our new friends but we actually forget that we are not that different in our everyday lives.
But at least we started to actively work on our youth center. It is going to be a lot of work we are not even a little bit close to finishing our project. But there are good vibes, ideas and a lot of passion for our project. So I believe that it is all going to be ok.”