Posts Tagged ‘EVS’

The Student Youth Council from Georgia has been established in 2001 by four student organizations, promoting establishment of high education standards in Ozurgeti (Guria region, West Georgia). The*Student-Youth Council* is a public union, which aims at solving the problems that youth and students are facing by protecting their rights, promoting knowledge and skills, filling informational gap, realizing youth’s intellectual, creative, cultural and sport potentials. Nowadays the organization works in the following programmes:

• Youth integration and assistance for their active involvement in public life;
• Assistance to promote and develop volunteering;
• Assistance to establish and develop democratic govern/self-govern.

*Student-Youth Council* is also involved in the “Youth in Action” programme. They already took part in 25 different kind of activities such as 5 “Youth Exchanges”, where the organisation was co-organizer sending organization and the co-organizer host organization of two projects as well as. Since 2008 *Student-Youth Council* is also involved in EVS projects. So far 20 EVS volunteers worked in their organization and they also send15 Georgian volunteers to Poland, Greece, Czech Republic, Italy, Hungary and Romania.

Are you curious to their realized work? Watch all their videos on the Student Youth Council YouTube channel.

Eka Kakulia from Georgia went in April 2010 to Latvia to work as an EVS volunteer at NGO Radi Vidi Pats. Below you can read about her experiences during her 6 months abroad:

It’s incredible how fast time can pass by. Especially when you are doing something great and exciting as your EVS project. Yes I’m volunteer but why I did it? It’s the most frequently asked question because I had nice life in Tbilisi (Georgia), full of happiness and love. I have wonderful friends, a good job which is creative, fun and offers different activities. Despite all of these I was crazy for an adventure, to live somewhere differently, challenge myself and feel like I am taking all opportunities that life gives. Then I heard about European Union initiative of the Youth in Action program I said why not?

For me it was some kind of experiment for refreshing my life but it’s most important and useful decision that I made to level up my personality. I left my family, my job, my friends and my usual lifestyle, but I never regretted about it, even just for a minute. I’m in Liepaja, Latvia since May 2010 as an EVS volunteer. My project can be described as 5 months full of joy, feelings, friendship, activities, adventures, experience, cultural shocks and tears (at the beginning because of homesickness, missing my family, my friends and at the end because of starting to think that it’s over, soon I will miss my friends in Liepaja with whom I have a lot of nice memories). Read the rest of this entry »

The Dutch Arnica went in September 2006 for 10 months to Poland to do her EVS. She teaches English at a school in Gorowo Ilawekie. During her EVS she fell in love with a Polish guy, Rafal. She spent almost half of her time in Poland with him and during her last month she even stayed at his place. When she went back to Holland, Rafal decided to follow her. One day later he arrived in Holland and after one month he found a new job. Last August Arnica and Rafal even got married!

Arnica and her husband travel twice a year to Poland to visit Górowo. They also organised a Dutch culture project in Poland: “Holandia po Polsku”. During this project Polish people could for example watch Dutch movies with Polish subtitles or could paint Dutch wooden shoes.

Arnica: “Our life is just perfect. Without EVS and Youth in Action, this would never happened to me. I will never forget my EVS in Poland. I just have to look at my husband to remember that great experience.”

Do you also want to share a special EVS story with us? Don’t hesitate and contact anita@noborders.eu.

Tsoghik Hayrapetyan (27) from Armenia went to Romania to work as an EVS volunteer. She has a great experience in voluntary work. She worked at many organizations in Gyumri. Tsoghik is a philologist, and for this reason she was teaching English in high schools in Romania and was engaged in youth work. Below you can read about her experiences during her 9 months abroad:

I am extremely excited about the possible opportunity to participate in EVS. I have great experience working with youth both in my work and in my extended family. I am also excited to share my culture with others and I feel this fits perfectly with the project’s desire for bringing multicultural activities to these youth. I’ll also have the opportunity to be a kind of ambassador and to represent my own culture from its strong and weak points, my own people with its past and present. Finally, not only do I hope to work but I believe the experience will allow the youth in Europe to teach me about themselves and about their country as well. Surely I’ll enlarge my scope of friends and mind. Read the rest of this entry »

Arman Sahakyan (26) from Armenia went to Romania to work as an EVS volunteer at NGO Ayrudzi. As he is a political scientist by profession he worked in the areas of human rights and democracy. Besides he communicated with representatives from different organizations, political scientists, as well as represent Armenia at different events and intercultural evenings. Below you can read about his experiences during his 9 months abroad:

I’m excited to be in an EVS project in Romania, because in this project I can find a lot of new things for me, and also it’s really a good opportunity for personal development. In this project each volunteer has the opportunity to organize any activity he/she wants, it gives young people the change to come with different ideas, to plan their strategy and tactics and finally act for reaching their goals. On the other hand I can find here a lot of friends, to share culture mentality, and to represent our country, culture, traditions, history etc. Read the rest of this entry »

This international partner seminar for EVS organisations provides the possibility to support networking, to exchange experiences, to learn more about SALTO-Inclusion, to get acquainted with the possibilities of Youthpass, to develop new Ideas and future projects and to evaluate the the experiences gained. Registration deadline: 15 October 2010.

More detailed information on the SALTO web site.

1.  On MyEVS.net you will find many experiences, stories and photos of EVS volunteers in the world. You can read their stories, have a look at their pictures, add comments and much more.

2.  Read the best stories from the 1^st edition of the Scrpitamanent contest. Scriptamanent is an international writing competition open to young people who have done voluntary experience abroad. Download the book with stories full of EVS adventures.

3.  A few weeks ago we wrote a post about Ioana, an EVS volunteer from Romania who’s writing a blog about her EVS experiences in Belgium at the Joetz office in Brussels. Now, you can also follow Laura, an EVS volunteer from Spain writing about her EVS experiences in Belgium.

4.  Thinking about doing your EVS in Greece? Then first read some thoughts of EVS volunteers on the EDRA blog of the Greek NGO Social Cooperative Activities for Minority Groups – EDRA.

5.  EVS Magazine ContAct, a magazine from NGO Continious Action, full of interesting stories about experiences, adventures and thoughts of EVS volunteers.

On this blog you can also read more EVS experience reports in the blog category ‘EVS Experiences”.  Do you also want to share your experiences with us? Please, contact anita@noborders.eu

The Training Course: “Facilitating the volunteers learning” aims at development of EVS mentors’ competences to support and facilitate learning processes of EVS volunteers with special focus on Learning to Learn competence. The course will be held from 4 to 10 October in Predeal, Romania. Registration deadline: 8 September. Find out more.

Have you done any kind of European Volunteer Service abroad between January 2008 and January 2011 and are you between the age of 15 and 30 years? If so, you are invited to participate in the Scriptamanent contest. The challenge is to write about your EVS experiences. The winning work will receive a sum of 300 euros! For the competition rules and registration sheet, please visit the Sriptamanent Contest website. Deadline: 1 February 2011.

ADVIT Moldova experience report by: EVS volunteer Kärt Koosapoeg, Estonia

The date then was the 12th of April. An important religious day celebrating the rising of the dead. Our goal for that day was to experience it according to the local Moldovan traditions. Weeks before we were told that all the people will leave the comfort of their homes and city surroundings to take some time off and head to the graveyard to meet with their dead grandparents and the weirdest part suggesting that people eat with the dead. Of course we were curious, who wouldn’t be?

We got an invitation from a volunteer we had met a short while back to join him for this holiday in a city called Comrat. Our host was waiting us already in the graveyard when we arrived in the middle of the city. At first we feared of getting lost, but after arriving we noticed that a lot of people with food were moving in one direction, so of course using our logic we started following people with food supplies and in no time soon we arrived to a big blue church. There were two big tables simply covered with abundant food and drinks and a priest went around putting holy water on food. Read the rest of this entry »