More Young for a Better Future!

From Monday the 8th to Sunday the 14en Tasev held a training course for EVS participants, called "More Young for a Better Future".

More than 14 participants mainly from the Balcan Countries took part at this interesting and happy training and enjoyed the city where I live.

Me and Yana were part of the staff. We helped Ozgur, Jale, Fevzi and Mahmut in taking pictures during the activities, inventing new energizers games, caring out some bureaucracy tasks...

Every day we had the chance to deepen our relationships from one hand, and the knowledge of the EVS project on the other.

The first day we introduced one each others and then we started with some important topic such as the Youth In Action program, whose EVS is a part of.

I realized that many information were unknown to me and a clear exposition helped me to fix them in my mind.

The following days, we had time to express our individual expectations and ideas about our volunteering program. Most of the participants had never leave with the EVS program but anyway they had many experience in the volunteering field in their own country.

The organization which attracted me the most was ACTOR from Bucarest - Romania, which is a NGO  focused on theatre activities such as the shadow theatre and their main art is the japanese Origami.

On the third day, we brought the entire group on a visit at the Tasev office. They were so surprised to see how many activities are taking place in this building!

I hope that some of them will come to Gaziantep again, a city that they had the opportunity to explore in a 7 days program which included also a short trip to the Zeugma museum (where the ancient mosaics are) and at the underwater Zeugma site, located on the Euphrate river, in which I swam !

Some pictures of the happy training will come soon.... :)

Sara

Gaziantep last week met the guests. Trenig for trainers. Georgia, Azerbaijan, Albania, Macedonia, Ukraine, Romania, Italy and of course Turkey. 

Only one week, but the impressions and information would be enough for a month. First day, and we all know and we hasten to know each other better, because we did not have much time. Ideas, projects and useful information comes to us every minute. The training course is the place where you can envy business relationships, find new ideas or new partners. And maybe a romantic ...

Our week was strict planned out, but plans have changed and we do not always know what will happen next. Invariable there was only time of a lunch and our fighting spirit. Cameras photographed without stopping and now we have preserved about 42 GB memories. Unless of course the memories can be translated into GB.

Didn't do without surprises. During training at Jale, ours trainers and the coordinator was birthday. And all participants decided to prepare a surprise. To Jale waited all day, and we behaved as usual. She even was upset. Not congratulations on facebook, anything. But we waited for a dinner, and began: the pie of a congratulation and is a lot of warm words. To tell that she was happy, means, to tell nothing.

Information was quite, monotonous, but the form is filed, was chosen correctly. Although it is possible repetition of the mother of learning. Especially worth mentioning independent work on writing projects, once again, it became clear that the practice is better than any explanation. Besides disclosing our ideas contributed to their early implementation. The more supporters we collect, the faster and better it will work our project.

Entertained, we also do not forget ........

Last week went on-arrival training near Istanbul. I want to say thank you coaches. You are very funny guys! It was held at altitude!!!!
What can I say, Istanbul huge city, and 10 hours is not enough, that would bypass it and see what should be seen.

So I made a personal top places that wanted to go. Alas, I was able to see the scheduled only st. Sofia.

The training course rearranged a clear statement schedule of activities. Five days of fun activities and socializing. Great food as well. Classes overlap with games, information filled images. Thus, all of our working memory. The first day of the traditional game "icebergs" in all possible variations. And of course familiar in all variations, allowing a wonderful lesson clearly and concisely express ideas leaving the main thing. The second day was under the EVS and cultural visit to the tourist center of Turkey. The third day filled albatrosses. And on the fourth, I wrote an email. And send it to the future. Their uncertain future.
It is hard to ignore the culture of the albatross. Plain fun clearly demonstrated our stereotypes. And for me, the people opened the other. Equality in society, the pursuit of globalization and cultural otherness. Very often, we forget that we are all different.

The last day for me was painted black. Who would not say that, but many of them I will not see anymore. Is that photo. I wanted to cry. After all, these guys have left a deep imprint on my memory. So thanks to all of them.

On-arrival training: new friends and new skills!

Last monday we flight from Gaziantep to Istanbul to join the on-arrival training course in Şile, a sea place 2 hours away from Istanbul.

We spent 5 days getting to know each others, twenty volunteers from all over the Europe have just started their EVS long-term project in Turkey, and not only in Gaziantep, even if the Antep representation was the more crowded one!

There were people coming from Ankara, the capital city, from Istanbul, the well known multicultural and artistic town, then from Bursa, a nice village on the sea, just few hours on boat from Istanbul; a couple of volunteers were coming from a farm in Küçükköy and finally two others were from Dyarbakır, our anatolic neighbour city!

The origin of our hosting organizations were very different and also the volunteers all together created a very coloured and multicultural team. We had Italy, the more popular, then UK with 3 young volunteers and so on Poland, Russia, Belorussia, Spain, Azerbajan, Greece, Estonia, Austria, Germany, Hungaria ....did I miss somebody!? 

Our three trainers came from Izmir and told us beautiful things about that city that increased our will to travel. Everyone was happy with his project and we have been awarded that this is just the beginning ... :) and probably the hardest time will have to come, but we did not lose our positivity!

Every day was divided between activities and 'coffee breaks', informal moments of chating and getting to know each others. Day by day we learnt how to approach other people and we increased our knowledge about what EVS is and how it will go on. 

The moment that I liked the most was the group activity with the simulation of the 'electric fence'...  Many ropes were put between trees to create a kind of fence...the idea was that of an electric fence and our aim to pass through it without touching the ropes! It firstly looked to us like a 'mission impossible' but then we manage how to solve the problem and the people were incredebly thrown through the fence with such a fluency! That's "team job".

We spent one afternoon and one night in Istanbul, without any guide so I took some pictures and wondered in the street captured by colours and windows...