Author: Marietta Tselepi

“Learning Patience can be a difficult experience, but once conquered, you will find life easier”  – Katherine Pulsifer

As a person, I was never really involved with Erasmus+ projects — I always had a preference towards projects and conferences that were made by universities and other organizations. 

So, when I was accepted after 4 months of waiting in the project Set the Tempo, I was quite happy to change my pace of daily working. I was so glad to change my demanding and full schedule to a more relaxed one. Volunteering has always helped me feel better and relax as I can see the results of my work almost immediately.  

But sadly, I was wrong. I was happy to see again some people that I already knew. I was eager to meet them and to start working in order to bring forth a positive change. But looking back to this year, the change was minimal.   

Waiting for a great start 

In the first month of the project, we were basically waiting for the other 7 volunteers to arrive so we can start to work. This resulted in the fact that our work was almost nonexistent and we were almost forgotten. The second month of the project brought forth the first quarantine, by which we were forced to stay inside with strangers for 14 days.  

After that, the work started tentatively. It became apparent the difficulty that people that actually care to bring forth a change and help, have to deal with many parasites. Parasites that, as I observed, are sucking the good work that the youth sector could do in the communities. (Often, when I think of those people, I think of leeches. My mind goes back to one of my favorite series of books “A Series of Unfortunate Events”. In the 3rd book, the aunt of the poor orphans is eaten by cannibal leeches.) There are many other work sectors that are getting money from different grants or, in our case, from the European Union. So yes, the people that want to get money doing almost nothing are leeches, in my humble opinion. 

Creating connections 

During the first few months, I had the chance though to cooperate with some really nice people that motivated me. Although I don’t like to use the word “friendship” I started feeling very nice and happy working with them. I also want to point out that I did not have a partner. We should have been working with partners, but mine did not arrive till November. Talking about a project that started in March, this aspect did not look that good for me. My work was more solitary than anything, but in the whole duration of the project, I did not feel like I was a part of a team.   

Work at its finest 

Summer came and we were finally able to go out and start working in the youth centers. Of course, you can understand the state of them after being closed for a year (Spoiler Alert: it was not good). Everything needed to be repainted, the mold needed to be cleaned, the windows needed fixing, the floor as well, nothing was ready and everything was pretty bad. Little by little I started working on that. The help I received from the organization was very limited. Thank God, I had a really nice volunteer helping me with some things. As such the project progressed, and through many hours of work, I managed to have the center ready. I had the first event done before all the other youth centers and I was very proud of it.   

Holiday 

Then I went back home to Greece for holidays. Honestly, the best time I spent on the project was the holiday that I took back home. But then I went back and work continued to be difficult for only one person. From August till October the work continued happening although my motivation was almost nonexistent. At this point, we had many arguments with the organization, and many things suddenly appeared for us to do that we had no knowledge of. The only thing that I was actually enjoying was my work with the volunteers and the neighbourhood that I was working in. I met some very nice people there that really made me happy that I came in the project.   

Losing motivation 

But in the first days of October we were again forbidden to do events in the youth centers. So everything had to be done online and the work became boring and it lost all meaning for me. Of course, at that time everyone was tired of doing online school and online university. I saw from my volunteers firstly, that they did not want to participate in these kinds of events, so I decided to not force anyone. I just did the events with very few people. 

In the first days of November my partner also came, after almost 9 months of waiting. He was a very nice boy and we started to work. And then the second and third quarantine came, where I had to stay in the house for a whole month. With that, my motivation died and went to Hades to the underground world and it is still there, keeping Hades company.  

Honestly, I do not have anything more to say about the last few months of the project, only that I miss working with the people of the community. It was hard to admit that online events do not work and my soul is being sucked out because of them.   

Thoughts for the future 

Right now, I am waiting for the project to finish so I can continue my life like before. Certainly, I gained some friends and a lot of patience. I think I really saw the ugly side of the youth sector and what it contains. Now, after this experience, I am much more certain that whatever I start has to do with community work. I will try to build a good foundation with people that really care about their communities. I am anxious to see the results that this project will have in the continuation of my life. Hopefully, I will collaborate with some of the people that I met. I am really hopeful for these collaborations and for the future.   

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The world has a weird way of always surprising you, be it with something bad or something good. Waiting patiently for the coffee places around Timisoara to open again, so I can go and enjoy some peace and quiet with a good cup of coffee, is the only thing that keeps me sane most of the days. Who would have told me that I would have found here in Timisoara really nice places to hang out and a month into being here everything would close down. But I digress. The point is that on 1^st of June we will able to go around the city again and actually enjoy all the beautiful shops that Timisoara surprisingly has.

A thing that is not really surprising is that the floor in my youth center is still not ready. The day that it will be finished I will have a party to celebrate because it is needed after almost a year of waiting for it. Also I am really hopeful that the government will start letting us start having events on the youth centers because it is really cool to plan and everything but all those plans need to come into fruition.

That is all for this week. See you for the next one!

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This week started great, being the first week that I started working in my youth center since we started the project. A lot of things are missing still from my youth center a floor, light, the windows need to change and some other small things here and there and it will become the perfect place for the people in the neighborhood to enjoy and a safe space for young and old alike.

I have been thinking of my youth center as a story it has beginning middle and ending with hundreds of challenges and solutions you never know when something will turn bad and you never know if what you are doing at any particular moment will bring good results. Hopefully, the end result will be a positive change in that particular neighborhood.

And although I am still alone in the youth center which means the person that was supposed to work with me did not manage to arrive before the whole Corona situation started, I am hopeful that I will manage to create a wonderful experience for the young people in my area when we will be able to open officially.

To end this week’s post I have a plant growing inside my youth center and I have no idea what to do with it, and also about 5 million spiders floating around, so that is fun as well. See you next week, stay tuned and safe!!

Being a part these past few months of an esc project was probably the worst time that I have ever spend in any country ever. My name is Marietta, and currently I am working on a project for FITT, I am a political scientist and I am doing my masters in Diplomatic and International Relations, I am from one of the most beautiful cities in Greece, Volos. I always have really high expectations and most of the time I end up getting disappointed and this is what happened with the past two months here in Timisoara.

The first couple of days here where amazing we were going out to parties, to really nice coffee places the project was starting to seem like it was going to be amazing. Almost all of the volunteers arrived and we were little by little started to form a team. Then Corona started and with that we were made to stay in our home 2 weeks before the rest of Romania, which means more or less we have been closed inside our home for more than two months.

This situation created a difficulty in actually working for the project. Everything turned to the virtual world which I do not appreciate and the only thing I could do was plan and micromanage every little detail of the activities that I want to do in my youth center when this situation will finish.

Leaving the difficulties aside though and the horrible mental state that this virus has created I have to recognize that part of the organization that hosts me here in Timisoara tried to help out and create for the team a program that will have us at least a little bit involved.

Now the past week we started again to plan more actively for our youth centers and for the first time in months the reason for which we are here is seemed to be actualized. I am really excited to go and fix the garden from my youth center and I was informed that in the next few days I will have a floor which I have been waiting for since last summer.

So everything has been moving forward little by little and after every storm should always be a rainbow, hopefully there is going to be a rainbow in our situation. This is only the first of many posts. Stay tuned and always safe.