Category: Youth Time

In this week’s episode, we are getting closer and closer to the opening of the exhibition. After two weeks of a lot of stairs, up and down, up and down! FREE GYM, we love it! The glutes are going to be amazing after the end of the project!
We finalized all the hard work with a bit more painting painting painting, brooming brooming brooming, and mopping mopping mopping. And just like that, our Cinderella era is OVEEEEERRR (we hope)!!! I gotta say teamwork does make the dream work, after all, everyone is always in a good spirit and cheering each other up! HURRAYYY for moral support! It does make a difference!

And now we move on with lighter work but definitely not less important. We started advertising the exhibition, going to the city centre, leaving posters all around the city and spreading the word with people we met on the streets!

“It’s already the third week! Our tasks are changing constantly, and we are trying to adapt to our new responsibilities. Still, we are managing to keep up the pace of work in order to have everything ready for the opening of the festival!” – Armando Koleci from Albania

THE GRAND OPENING
The chaos starts as the opening approaches and the artists are starting to arrive. Dealing with flight delays and lots of rides to the airport, the team in charge of the accommodation has the most pressure to get everything right and make sure everyone gets picked up on time and is going to the right places!

As the artists start to put together all the artwork, we help them with everything they may need to make sure the exhibition will look perfect!
“My experience for that week was really excellent, thrilling, busy and funny, as a person who was responsible for picking up and accommodating the artists who came for the festival. I was running between the youth house and the airport with the poster of Analog Mania. I was the first person who listened to their thoughts about their new experience in Timisoara, the festival, how was their flight and what they were expecting or what they would do for the exhibition. We worked a lot for the opening cause we had only 48 hours left and every artist was so involved. We thought that only the organization of the exhibition was needed, like the art pieces, but nooo, we still had to do cleaning cleaning, sponging sponging and painting painting. Preparing stuff for the exhibition was really exciting cause we assisted them, showing them every needed material and helping in fixing everything. This week was crazy but for real it was so cool.” – Lana from Georgia
April 1st is here, and everyone’s excited about it, running around, and getting final things ready! We started with a tour of the exhibition and moved on as the artists presented their work. We took a break to appreciate a beautiful concert with Armenian music, and after we finalized the amazing tour, it was beautiful to see all the hard work paid off!

The first day was truly a success, with such amazing artwork and artists, and now we move to the second day in another gallery, where we focus more on photography and film, and let me tell you it was AMAZING! Also emotional at the same time, because we know it’s ending!

BESIDES THE EXHIBITION
During this week besides the craziness of the opening, we had more cultural nights, this time Romania, Moldova, France and Spain! Always with amazing food and fun of course!

On the first days we wrote our names on envelopes to put on the office wall so we can write motivational/gratitude messages or whatever we want to each other, and this week we started it and it felt amazing to have some words of support or funny messages!
And since after this week, the work with the exhibition is done we start to plan the activities and workshops for the next stage of the project.

Don’t miss the next episode!

An article by Carolina Pires

Once upon a time a group of young people decided to join for 1 full month an amazing volunteering project happening in the beautiful city of Timisoara, in Romania, with the goal to support the Analog Mania Festival. The first days of the experience were dedicated to team building activities with youth workers from FITT, to create a safe space for everyone and get us closer to each other!

Our AMAZING guide Foalex gave us an AMAZING tour of ‘The Palace’, also known as the youth house, and of the Timisoara city center!

After a few days of getting to know each other and exploring our surroundings we met the ICONIC Emil Kindlein, the artist who’s organizing everything with a bright mind full of ideas!

When the work week began everyone was excited about it! Our mornings always started with fun energizers, games and music to get us into a good spirit to start the hard work.

The first few days were super tough, with a lot of physical work and hands-on jobs, lots of brushing brushing brushing, scrubbing scrubbing scrubbing, brooming brooming brooming, painting painting painting, everything needed to be squeaky clean!! Although we were tired, it was super rewarding to know that every little detail made a huuuuuge difference at the end! I can assure that all our parents will be proud to see how much we cleaned and the new skills we acquired.

“Every place could be your home if you clean enough” – Hassan from Spain

“This week has been hard because we had to prepare the youth house for the exhibition. However, we have worked as a team and we helped each other in order to achieve our goals.” – Brenda from Spain

“My experience with FITT has been both fun and tiring. The first two weeks so far have been unexpectedly dusty, but we managed to handle everything. We are a good team and laughing and having fun help us to be more productive. Looking forward to the rest of this journey! Less dust, more fun!” – Eter from Georgia

“I’m very pleased with the project so far, I enjoy being surrounded by these kind and amazing people, the brooming brooming and spongy spongy things are new to me, but I’m ok with them huh, can’t wait for more woohoo. My only regret is that I’m at the university a little part of the day, so I cannot get fully involved in the activities. :(“ – Diana from the Republic of Moldova

In between days we also started our cultural nights, so far we’ve tried amazing food and learned a little bit about Georgia, Greece, Albania and Portugal!

This past week was for sure challenging as we are adapting to a new place, new people and some of us doing jobs we’ve never done before, but at the same time that’s the fun of it! Can’t wait to see what the upcoming weeks will bring us! Tune in for the next episode!

An article by Carolina Pires

2 months ago, I was looking for some volunteering projects in the European Solidarity Corps portal. When I found the FITT opportunity, I was like, “Wow, what an interesting project, but what is FITT? What do they do exactly? How is Romania? How is living in Romania? How are Romanians?” I have never known someone that has been living here or volunteering here.  

If you don’t know what FITT is, you should visit their webpage to understand precisely. But shortly, it is a group of people who, from what I understood, works as an umbrella organization for young people of the city and their projects. But in any case, volunteering in FITT is a unique experience; it’s never boring and there are no 2 twin days. I have been helping organise an art exposition, helped update their activities in the European youth year portal, participated in a 1-week training about green entrepreneurship and circular economy, joined a Halloween party organised by FITT and a lot of other things I do not remember now.   

Me and my ¿Boss? At the Halloween party 

In these 3 weeks, I also have discovered a bit about Timisoara. And in general, I think it is a good volunteering place. People here are nice and welcoming, at least the ones I have known in this short period of time. There are a lot of young people every place, and you have a few choices to spend your free time all around the city.  

Article by Antton from Spain