January 2020

NEETs and the communities

            After the winter holidays, in January we have restarted activities. This time, we started with organising and planning the visits of 6 NEET communities from the rural area. We created posters, we visited and talked with persons from schools, libraries and with the mayors of Vlădeşti, Păuseşti Otăsău, Budești, Mihăești, Pietrari and Sălătrucel. Firstly, we intoduced ourselves and our project to the authorities and together we established the activities we could implement, considering the existing problems and needs of the community. For each village, we sketched the activities which we will apply, these varying from arranging the books in the village library together with youngsters from the area, repairing and painting the playgrounds of the villages to communication and interculturality workshops, dance and traditional music. We would like to thank for the support and hospitality: Nicolae Moraru – mayor of Pietrari village; Crina Popescu – librarian of Pietrari village; Cătălin Avan – mayor of Păușești (Otăsău) village; Cristian Fota – principal of Păușești (Otăsău) Secondary School; Constantin Bârzăgeanu – mayor of Mihăești village; Lupșoiu Camelia – principal of Mihăești Secondary School; Sima Nicolae – mayor of Sălătrucel; Uțulete Anca – principal of Sălătrucel Secondary School; Mioara Negrilă – manager of CNIPT Sălătrucel; Adrian Cosac – mayor of Vlădești village; Elena Ciobotea – librarian at Vlădești Village Library; Ion Vlădulescu – mayor of Budești village; Simona Ispas – principal of Budești Secondary School. We are happy that, starting next week, after a few days in which we will define our activity plan and schedule, we will start working in these communities. We will spend almost a week in each of them. This time spent with visits and discussions with the authorities was unforgettable. They were so kind and so thoughtful. We love Romanian people.

Mid-term Training

We thus reached the half of our mobility in Romania. As we were telling you in the beginning articles, we have two meetings with the National Agency: On-Arrival Training and Mid-term Training. This month, the time came for the second meeting, which was held in Bucharest.    If during the first training we were told about our stay here, we were given useful information about Cigna and about the learning process, this time the training was focused more on us, on what we have learnt, on what we already know. We had sessions in which we presented our project and our activities to the other present volunteers. We found out about the other developed projects from the ones that were there, sessions in which our knowledge regarding Romania was tested. There were also sessions in which each one of us had to evaluate themselves and share aspects regarding the project team, the connection with the other volunteers, with the host organisation, or with the mentor. Each day we had periods of reflection in which we had to think about the impact we made in the community, about the difficult moments (if these existed) and how we managed to overcome them, moments which were about us and our reaction in certain contexts. Also, we have learnt about YouthPass and its preparation at the end of the stint. A part of the activities used which we enjoyed were: Mission Impossible (completing the task with a team), LEGO Game (in which you create your LEGO about volunteering experience and explain it to the others), Street Wisdom (a group task, in which we found a place in the city where we could talk; we were supposed to answer/discuss about some questions regarding our EVS experience; this task was also good for discovering the city); Flipchart Game (the volunteers filled the flipcharts with their ideas and tips about traveling, education, motivation, volunteering work) and some energisers done by the volunteers. We all preferred dancing as energizer.  The training lasted a few days and it was a pleasant experience for us. We also enjoyed the fact that we became friends with volunteers from other countries which are also involved in similar projects.