Tag: youth centre

I find it incredible that a year has passed since I decided to come to Timisoara to do a European volunteering project. After a year of feeling lost and unmotivated, this experience came at the perfect time to give me back the desire and enthusiasm to do different things.

During this year, I have done more things than I can remember, and I have learned in so many aspects, that I still need time to process it. From construction and DIY, through marketing and social networks, to community engagement and facilitating activities for young people…

But it has also been a process of learning and personal discovery that has given me a lot. Living with 15 people in the same space has made me realize how important respect, patience, and empathy are. The multicultural environment in which we have moved here has made us more tolerant and aware of our weaknesses and strengths. We have experienced what solidarity is and we have learned a lot from each other. Despite some moments of chaos or small conflicts, there have been good vibes at Casa Tineretului all the time.

What, without a doubt, has made this experience something special and unrepeatable has been the people. Friends (who are already family), coordinators, youth workers, colleagues, locals… people who have inspired me and given me their time and love selflessly, and with whom I have shared everything. People who have made me feel at home from the first minute, and who have shown me that the bonds you create in experiences like these are much stronger than you can imagine at the beginning. They have made this something more than volunteering.

It is indisputable that what volunteering brings you goes far beyond the mere work you do in the host organization. But it is not only the project itself that makes this experience something remarkable that you will remember all your life. It’s all the extra hours you spend with colleagues, the talks that make you be more open-minded to new realities and points of view, teamwork, commitment, and dedication to a project that can have a very positive impact on the community… and, of course, all those fun moments you spend with your people.

Despite fatigue, improvisation or doubts, all this has been very worthwhile, and as much as I try to explain what all of this has meant for me, few people can understand it.

I have shared so many things, enjoyed everything so much, and received so many from others and from this experience… it excites me to know that I have been part of something so great that it has inspired, motivated, or encouraged other young people.

This will be with me forever and I hope to remember with pride that together with FITT and YCUP2, a group of international volunteers made magic.

I am back home exhausted but happy, grateful for the opportunity, proud of everything we achieved and looking forward to being back in Timisoara soon and seeing my dear adventure partners again.

I have been in Lugoj for a bit less than 3 weeks, but it feels like it’s been more time. It is very different from where I live in Portugal but somehow it kind of feels like home. It’s very comforting, everyone is very welcoming and nice. 

It is weird to think it has already been 3 weeks but also weird to think it has only been that. It’s a feeling very hard to describe honestly. Everything has been happening so fast, but I have established a routine and it feels like I’ve known everyone for more time.  

The youth centre from Lugoj is a place where we all feel good. We are working but in a very relaxed way. There’s always room for laughter, music, discussion, and new ideas. Talking with the other volunteers, hearing, and discussing ideas for the youth centre is very exciting. I think we have really good plans, and we have the opportunity to do meaningful and fun things here.  

Activities with the locals in Lugoj

In these past weeks, I have met the local volunteers and other locals. Everyone is very nice, most of them are excited to get to know us, learn something about our countries and how we got here. When we are in a group, we find a way to communicate, a big mix of English and a bit of Romanian. The environment is always fun and chill. We are learning every day, whether it is Romanian words, traditions, or just curiosities about the country. Also, we are planning, promoting, and developing activities, which also makes me learn a lot, obviously.  

Last week we planned our first event: a treasure hunt. We thought about clues, riddles, codes, characters, superpowers, and a story to put it all together. It was a well-taught and planned event, but I think that the participants’ engagement and enthusiasm were what made it really magical. They were really into the story and the mystery. My character, “the black witch” had the power to make the participants be in silence for one minute if I managed to touch them. They took this very seriously and were running from me like crazy and always got “scared” when I got close to them.  They solved the mystery and we all got together, made a bonfire to eat and drink. I think this day was one of my favourites since I arrived in Romania, everyone was so happy and comfortable. It was even better than what we had imagined.  

I’m excited to continue the work we started and create bigger and better things.  

It was a week of getting ready and cheering each other on.

The first wing was a preparatory group work, part and the end of last week.  Week after week, we learn how to climb the mountains of adventure, our adventure is to jump in order to look into the far future.

It was only possible to encourage each other and pay attention to the smallest details that changed the course of our work and our psychology, which is the most important thing.

The second wing was full of surprises that are getting to know and talking to local people in order to get more information which is really a way to deliver young people a youth house in their neighbourhood (Dorobantilor).

Talking to people and getting to discover more about Romania, is a wonderful thing for me personally. This was the best of every team I was in, with all humility!

The most surprising thing I found out is that my name is love in Romanian, which, by chance, was told to me by a former FITT volunteer (thank you, Eliza!).

On the 14th of December, the Youth Centre of Dacia exchanged the noise of construction work, with the sound of a guitar and a beautiful voice. Helped by the youth workers from FITT, the place changed its atmosphere. The opening was on! A little buffet, a workshop area, a lot of welcoming puff, and some thankful speeches.

The latest details were made the same day: to embellish the place and put the furniture. What a relief for us to see that big day coming! We were now able to say: we did it! The challenge of renovating a formerly industrial place to a welcoming one in a month is completed. Time was definitely our worst enemy here. But in the end, we achieved to make the list of the Youth Centres growing.

Now, the association CoderDojo will make it its own. This building provides them with a place for their activities as a “general quarter”. Until 2023, as the year of Timișoara European Capital of Culture, other Youth Centres will rise with FITT and hopefully provide local associations places for their work and activities.

2022 will then be a year of hard work for the FITT team. Months after months, the experience will be improved. Other volunteers will come and join this enriching movement. This volunteering was for me a unique, multicultural and most of all intense experience. Full of dust but also full of friendships. And I wish the next ones to enjoy it as much as I did.

The fourth week began as the third had ended: with a lot of paint. Walls turned yellow, ladders were
carried around and brushes were dipped into buckets until even the last corner of the building had
the colour of our imagination. A little later, we slowly reached a point where things we hadn’t cared
about before suddenly became relevant. That means, among other things, that we cleaned the
bathroom, which was full of paint, went hunting for tape remnants and tried to remove dirt and
paint from the floor. At the same time, we were able to give the youth centre more character by
means of a sofa that had been donated to us, a carpet and other furniture. In this way, we drove the
spirit of the construction work out of the building.

The opening followed. We had prepared the neighbourhood for this beforehand by putting up posters
in the streets with invitations to it. Walking around in clean clothes and without paint or dust in our
hair in the spaces we had spent weeks tinkering with was strange, of course, but added mostly to the
sense of closure. The opening included games, live music, speeches and food, as well as visiting from
the neighbourhood, which made our work seem more relevant than ever.

While perhaps not everything went perfectly and still isn’t perfect, we did our best for a month, and
certainly laid the groundwork for a place for the neighbourhood’s youth that now only needs to be put
to good use. In conclusion, all we can say is that we can look back with pride and wish the next 9
teams an equally beautiful and successful time!

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!

The first week of the Youth Centres UP 2 project (first team of international volunteers for 30 days), in which an unused heating building is turned into a centre for the youth of a neighbourhood within about a month, started with team building activities.
This was followed by a shallow transition to the actual work on the centre, which, if one disregards the two-meter-deep hole in the entrance area, is a good starting point. So, initially divided into three teams with their own areas of responsibility, but ultimately as one team, we set to work.

Within three days, we performed the following tasks:

• Cleaning the garden and the building
• Scraping the walls
• Removing holes from the walls, leveling them and preparing them for painting
• Cutting trees
• Redesigning and making furniture

In parallel, we made a constant effort to involve the community by ending each of the days at the future youth centre with a joint community engagement. We talked to as many people as possible and collected opinions and ideas in order to design the place according to the wishes of the neighbourhood.
So, in conclusion, all we can say is that if we have been able to learn and create so much in such a short time, we can only look forward to the coming period with joy!

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!