Tag: ESC

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

We have been working now directly and indirectly on the realisation of a youth centre for three weeks. The tasks of the second week often coincided with those of the first. In concrete terms, this means that we still mainly scraped and sealed walls and removed graffiti to prepare them to be painted. At the same time, we repaired and painted furniture.

So we created a foundation on which we could build the youth centre. While the tasks themselves resembled each other, it changed how we dealt with them and their surroundings; so as we wall-scratched our way through the indoor and outdoor spaces, we became more routinised, more attuned as a team, discovering strengths and learning how to use them. We scratched problems free, then scratched our heads while swearing, but always found solutions in the end.

From the third week on, everything started to come together relatively suddenly. Within a day, a rather drab -but of course excellently prepared- facade became a colourful one, its appearance resembling that of a Rubix cube. Over the course of the week, this wave of colour continued to spill through the interiors and exteriors: we painted walls, ceilings, window frames, doors, and now and then accidentally floors and ourselves in all the colours the rainbow has to offer. At the same time, a carpet of tiles spread in one of the rooms, turning some of us into true experts in the field of tiling.

This change was also noticed by the community. Suddenly we were no longer perceived as the gang that made a shabby building even uglier than it already was, but as the ones trying to change something for the better. Our work was appreciated more than ever, with more and more residents stopping to comment on our work and ask questions.

In the past two weeks, we also continued to take time every day to actively reach out to the community. In addition to the usual engaging people by asking questions, we added active promotion by distributing flyers. This was supplemented by the help that the community offered us. This included local volunteers helping us with crafts and donating furniture for the youth centre. This kind of response was very motivating and encouraged us to continue to do our best every day at the youth centre.

At the end of the third week, we are now close to the completion of the youth centre. We have now reached a point where a coherent picture emerges from a construction site and can hardly wait to finally complete the project and declare the youth centre opened!

Before I came to Romania, I thought that one year was too much, but now when I look back, six months have passed so quickly. Even when you move from one place to another in your city, many things change your life. Some of them are conscious, some of them not. So moving to another country is a challenge itself. Putting everything aside and starting a new life for one year it’s like intensive life school.

I am learning by experiencing living with people from different countries. When you get to know more people, you also discover what you are doing, true or wrong, good or bad.

A lot of things have changed in my life. First, I met new people, and some of them will stay special for me. Secondly, you can see yourself more precisely what have you done or what haven’t you done in your life.

We did a lot of different kinds of activities, from cleaning the space to organising activities, collecting signatures, or making videos. Maybe I didn’t give my best in some of the activities, but I had enjoyed them a lot. 

We had some difficult times like everyone during this period. It has taught me a lot: how to be more tolerant, more patient, but also more critical. If you can see or evaluate yourself objectively, you can get the results if it’s worth it or not spending time in another country with many people in the same house.

Last but not least

I wanted to be here because I didn’t have anything to do better and I do not regret it at all. On the contrary, I am glad I am here because I am in the middle of my ’20s and I have time to be part of this team. It’s an excellent experience because when I turn 30’s, I will not have time and motivation for this kind of activities.

Maybe Romania is unknown to many people but it was not the same for me. I have been here before; moreover, my father has been here for a long time ago.

Let’s see what time will decide for me. I already have passed my six months. I hope the next six months will be better than these. 😊

Hi! My name is Charlie and I am a volunteer in Timis County Youth Foundation, I’ve chosen to volunteer in this organization because it was for me a great opportunity to leave abroad and to do something concrete for other young people like me, somewhere else in the world. I work together with a team of international volunteers from all over the world, and together we want to present to you 10 reasons why you should become a volunteer as well!

Meet wonderful people from everywhere in the world

“I felt like being involved the in important things for the society we live in and I met wonderful people. Volunteering is an experience, and I would encourage anyone to do this wholeheartedly”

Change the world at your scale and make a difference

“Now, in Timisoara, I am trying something different, challenging but at the same time, a teaching thing: helping young people in a different country have their own youth space, and it was one of the most yielding decisions I made in my life”

Create bridges between the communities

“This is a great opportunity to do something meaningful for a community. It is a rich human experience that opens up to different realities and will for sure make you grow”

Open yourself to new realities and problematics

“Volunteering is a unique experience that allows you to know other realities and points of view and gives you the chance to be part of a project that unites communities. It is the best way to enrich yourself as a person and as a professional”

Help people in need

“Volunteering often involves helping those in need and it can be useful in showing us that, in fact, our own lives are not as bad as we thought they were”

Know yourself and the ones around you better

“It gives you the opportunity to improve your skills and learn new ones, to better know yourself and those around you, and to make friends for life. Volunteering is life-changing and, somehow, it changes your way of thinking”

Try a new experience

“Volunteering gives you the chance to give something back to the community or just to make a difference from people around you. It also helps you develop new skills or build an exciting experience and knowledge”

Become more confident in English

“Volunteering gives you the chance to improve your language and communication skills and make you expanding your comfort zone”

Learn deeply about a culture

“Volunteering is a way to discover the world: you get abroad for a more or less long period, you stay in a place and learn to get to know it, the habits, the language, the people… all in a truer way than if you were just passing by and visiting. You learn, you give things, and those you meet along the way will give some back to you. You might even get to meet your own true self in the end…”

Accept differences and be more tolerant

“In the beginning, joining in a big volunteering project could seem scary, changing your all life for a long period of time is a hard challenge. But there, I learned a lot of life lessons, but some of the most important are that all origins are the same. It doesn’t matter your religion, where you come from, or the color of your skin. Those things don’t define if you are a good or bad person.”

And an eleventh one because we are generous …

Have fun!!!

“During my volunteering project, I’ve learned to collaborate with other people, learned new dance steps from different countries. Tried a lot of new drinks especially local drinks. And enjoyed a lot of laughter and nice memories. I would motivate all of you young people to come and join this or kind of these volunteer experiences if you wanna spend good days away from your normal life and improve your social circle. It’s a little work with a lot of fun. But always the fun part is hidden. It’s top-secret. ;)”

If you also wanna know how can volunteering change your life and are curious to try a new experience, check our website.

We propose new volunteering projects regularly and you can see more about our organization.

During the renovation of the building in the 4^th week in Lugoj, we were no more working in groups, but rather everyone was joining some company and started to work while laughing and talking to each other. We worked a lot on walls and windows, we cleaned them and started painting, and the colleagues were really enjoying it. We learnt how to scratch and how to paint. We got some electricity problems and water shortage but it got fixed in the same week. 

The community engagement for this week was quite successful and we got three new volunteers from the local community. But not everyone was satisfied with the work progress. The team members were getting closer to each other and after work, we were arranging parties and celebrating teammate’s birthdays. It was the reason that progress in work was a bit slower but the solidarity among us got stronger by celebrating events together so the planning for the next week was to finish the painting and scratching the windows.

Here are some personal opinions of teammates about the progress of work:

I am happy and enjoying the project because the work for this week was painting and I really enjoyed painting. I felt very happy after painting when it looks decorative. In addition, I like to interact with local people during community engagement, the people of Lugoj are quite cooperative and interesting. (Syed Quosain Haider, Pakistan)

In the 4^th week, the painting was the easiest to do and scratching the windows was really tough but we did a lot of painting and scratching. I am thankful to all team members for helping me celebrate my birthday. Their kind wishes and lovely behaviour is something I will miss after the project. (Irem Aksoy, Turkey)

This week I did a lot of scratching to clean the windows, it was difficult but I worked with my friends and enjoyed their company. Here I really want to mention about cooperative and friendly people of Romania. I find it really interesting that most of the people can talk with us in English and they are ready to help us if we got any problems while travelling. I am happy to work for the youth of Romania because I explored Romania with my friends and one friend gave us residence and served us breakfast when we were left helpless at a train station because of missing the train. (Mohammad Farooqui, Pakistan)

The first week of the project Solidarity for Lugoj aimed to build the team and learn teamwork and lots of things necessary to accomplish the work.

So in the 2^nd week, we gathered in the youth centre and the president of FITT divided us into 4 groups and assigned tasks for building renovation. I would rather say building the youth centre rather than renovating, as some tasks really demand real construction.

The teams started work and did their assigned tasks, which include:

According to statistically significant data, we almost finished 30 per cent of the entire work in the first week, which was more encouraging for all team members. In addition, we also did community engagement in person as well as on social media and we got two friends from the local community who helped us a lot during our work.

Furkan, member of group 1

I wasn’t expecting it to be so hard but I find the roof work the most difficult part because we were working under the sun and we clean it thoroughly. My teammates cleaned the room and took out all the old stuff from the roof. We also scratched some parts of the wall and cleaned the floor. The tasks were difficult but as a team, we helped each other and finished most of the hard parts in the first week.

Bidzo, member of group 2

The first day, I felt it is difficult and we took out all the old stuff from rooms like shelves, piano tables and chairs.

We cleaned the rooms and scratched the walls and we almost finished the painting of the walls in the first week. The group was energetic and all members were enjoying at the same time while working together. It was an amazing experience working with friends from different countries.

Simon, member of group 3

We were eight people, the task was difficult but when I saw my friends working hard shoulder by shoulder I forget the hardships and started working with my full energy. We cleaned the room, broke the wooden floor, and scratched the walls and ceiling. We filled the holes with cement paste, cleaned the room and made it ready for a new painting and floor finishing.

Galandar , member group 4

I was excited on the first day, our task was to clean the garden and cut the bushes and extra grass. Our group members divided the tasks and some started scratching the boundary wall of the garden. Others cleaned the garden. It wasn’t that difficult for us and we almost finished half of the work in the first week. The work became more enjoyable when we played music and while working we were dancing as well. That helped us not to feel tired during work.

We are looking forward to the next challenges!

Sometimes, I wonder how something as simple as a single question can change your life that much.

-Shall we go? –Let’s go!

This is how my conversation with my friend Miriam ended the day we decided to go somewhere else to be volunteers.

I have always been a girl who has thought that we all “have´´ to follow a standard life path for my background and surroundings. Fortunately, or unfortunately, 2020 came to our lives to change them at all. It has given us bad days, and it was, in my case, a rollercoaster of feelings though, I have lived through moments that if it hadn’t been for the pandemic situation, I would not have probably.

There will always be people telling you it is not a good time to have this kind of experience due to the world situation but, on the contrary, it was the best one for me.

I started my professional career in events management and marketing (what I studied for) when the Covid-19 appeared. Then, I went back to my hometown for almost a year (I left it when I was 18). I have excellent memories of what I did and who I spent my days with “there is nothing like being home ;)´´

I guess at some point, we all have felt lost this weird year. That was when I realised I had to do something else (because nothing ventured, nothing gained).

I have had two other experiences abroad, and I have always had the feeling to do it again. I do not know what the future has to offer me, but I am sure that it was the right idea to come to Timisoara.

Firstly, everybody doubts what will happen when it comes to an abroad experience, and I was not far. If I am honest, my expectations were not high. I think it was because the selection process was speedy, and I was not aware of the reality yet (I got my flight ticket one week after the interview).

Flights to Timisoara

After a one-day trip (and a few goodbyes), I arrived in Timisoara ready to have one of the best experiences in my life.

I am willing to work, learn a lot from everything and everyone, discover a new country and new people I will live and work with, have fun, and, one of the things I value most, grow personally and professionally.

Every part of the project has exceeded my expectations so far, and I am looking forward to seeing what has to come.

I always remember a phrase which says: ‘You win some, you learn some’. In this case, my insight is you do both, though.

Ciao, I am Fatih from Turkey, and this is my first post during my volunteering experience!

They say that every person shapes their destiny. But I think sometimes we just can’t. At least the part of my life in Romania is happening out of my control.

My family’s story with Romania began in 1996. I was six months old and my father worked in a gum company in Turkey. When the company moved to Romania, he had to leave us for six months and embark on his first experience abroad.

After a very long time in 2017, it was my turn to meet Romania. I discovered the EVS (now ESC) program and participated in a short-term volunteering program in Arad. Just like my father, my first abroad experience was in Romania. My volunteering experience in Arad had taken only five weeks. I took a role in organizing sports activities such as public running and football. Still, I tasted the Romanian culture and then I came back to my country and got my bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Public Administration in 2019 but I couldn’t have a chance to work in my field. Then I got a job in Customer Services. After seven months, I felt that it was not what I needed, so I quitted.

I started searching online for volunteering projects and found a 1-year project from FITT. I liked the idea of building and reshaping youth centres for the community, so I decided to take action. I thought that this would be an excellent opportunity for me, so I applied to the project. That’s how I met FITT.

My application process with FITT was very fast. I got my visa in one month. During my university period, I took part in some volunteering projects, but I didn’t have much time for volunteering after graduation. Now I have a whole year as a volunteer, and I want to use this opportunity as much as I can.

Today I am in Romania. I have stopped making plans. Let’s see what Romania will decide about my destiny!

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This week that just passed was the first week in two months that we finally had some more freedom, since we changed from state of emergency to state of alert.

For our project, this means that we could finally go to our youth centers and start working on them hand on! After so long of being here without being able to directly do what we came here for, the time finally came!

So what is the result of this? Dust, dirt and happiness!
(and lots of new friendships with spiders!)
The feeling of being content after you have done a difficult job (or at least part of it!) after a long time of not being able to, is purely indescribable! How dirty you end up returning home, or how much your body hurts from all the work are aspects that have very little value in such cases. Because after all, it feels like you are having a weight off of you after a long time of carrying it, and you can at last walk with more confidence.

After two full days of cleaning, repairing and rearranging things in my youth center at Calea Martirilor, it is finally taking its form.
Slowly but steadily, it is transforming into the butterfly it was meant to be from the start. Cliche, I know! But if you see all the colors that pop up now that it is clean, and the feeling of coziness and beauty it emits more and more after every time I leave the place having worked on making it shine, you will understand what I mean!

I am fortunate that I had, during these two days, the help of two different locals, Stefan and David. Without their help, I would not have progressed so far. Sometimes, even receiving the will of someone wanting to help, is enough and can make one’s life much less complicated and more beautiful. In my case, those two persons did more than just giving me moral support and showing me that they truly want to help me. And for this I am extremely glad and consequently filled with more courage and hope to put my best self into this endeavour.

No matter how hard the work is, once you start reaping what you sowed, it is all worth it.

I am eager to finish this first stage of preparing it to receive the public, and creating all those activities that is meant to have! Hopefully, the corona situation will soon calm down even more, and this dream will become a reality for me and everyone that can benefit from this youth center!

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My name is Aigly, I come from Greece and I am a volunteer for FITT.
I arrived here at 6th of February, very happy for my new city but also a bit stressed because of the big change. I was finally getting the chance to live in this beautiful city! Having been here before many time, I already was in love with this unique vibe that Timisoara has.
But also I was so excited to work on the project that I am volunteering for! It has to do with youth work and is connected to volunteering work I had previously done here, in Timisoara, in the summer of 2019.

I moved to Romania 3 months ago, but spent over 2 of them in isolation.

But then, covid-19 came, and with it, lockdown, isolation and all the turmoil that followed these. My quarantine started on the 10th of March. Having spent 7 weeks in self-isolation, and 2 weeks in actual quarantine for safety reasons, before the state of emergency started in Romania, it all adds up to more than 2 months of not going out.
Take a moment to imagine moving to a city in a foreign country. This is usually a scary and ground-shaking experience on its own. Now add almost immediately being forced to stay inside, before having the chance to explore your new city or the opportunity to feel like you are part of it, without speaking the language or being with your family.

Ever since I moved, I have done a lot of things to cultivate myself.
I have been learning how to play the guitar on my own and I practiced ceramics. I started taking more seriously some hobbies of mine, like photography and poetry to mention a few, and even started working on art projects with my roommate.
I read “Blindness” by Saramago, a great book (which I recommend to everyone, by the way, especially during the times of Corona) and I started an informational book about photography.
I also started 2 online courses on edX, one about learning and one about justice, and I started learning the Romanian language.
I finished some great series and watched a few amazing movies, and started watching Romanian cinema, which I fell in love with! All in all, they made me think a lot, they broadened my mind, pleased my aesthetics and confronted my emotions.
Finally, I introduced working out in my daily routine.
These are not all, but they are what took up most of my free time. Along with these, I also had to work for the project that I came here for. Mostly it was in the form of seminars and workshops to prepare myself for the work in the youth centers.

Most of these things though happened during the weeks that I have been in isolation. Not being able to go outside has forced me to look inside for growth, fun, development and feeling content.

I could whine and complain. And sure I did at first, and that is fine!

Or I could get over it and make use of this peculiar yet still unique situation.

It was hard at first, especially considering I am not in my home country while going through this crisis. But I like to think that great difficulties like this always give a great chance for change. Spending so long inside a house, that I barely felt like my own at the time, forced me to change my habits and adapt to a situation that I didn’t sign up for (or any of us, for that matter!).
I could whine and complain.
And sure I did at first, and that is fine! Allowing yourself to feel some weakness is always important, and this definitely was a situation that invited one to lose control of the positive impact one’s actions have upon themselves.
Or I could get over it and make use of this peculiar yet still unique situation. Isolation and lack of social contact forces one to stay on their own, confront their thoughts, and value their priorities better, with the fresh look of having lost what they previously took for granted.
The second option is what I chose and still am choosing to do. And I am glad.
In the end, there is no bad without good, and no good without bad. At the same time, unfortunate events are unavoidable and there is nothing we can do to gain control over them. Which side we choose to pay attention to the most, though, is completely up to us.