Spanish classroom and Art Conferences.

Hello everyone!

We are Ana and Daniel, and we want to explain you some reasons because we decided to do the Spanish Clasroom and the art conferences in the school of art of Arad.

Daniel and me decided to do more things for the Arad society. For that reason we asked in that place for interact and teach art knowledge for the teenagers because we studied history of art at the University of Madrid.We will teach Spanish in Monday and Wednesday since 3 until 4.30 p.m. The Art Conferences will be until June twice per month. We are preparing s blog to share more information about art and about the conferences and our schedule. They will be in Thursday since 2 until 3.30 p.m.

With our work in the school of art we want to teach what I learned in our degree. We want to share and interact with that future artists. We want to make the potential of these future artists and be an example to follow the path of the humanities. It is the way of personal and social learning, the way teaches you to be a person, become interested in what's around you.

Volunteers in Romania: the power of non-verbal communication

It is known that communication is one of the most important parts of the life of any human. Being a social creature, human beings need to communicate, to share ideas, to develop connections through language.

One of the biggest challenges we face while doing volunteer in Romania is the language barrier. If you work mainly with people who speak English this is not a problem, but this is not the case for us. Every day we go to the schools and we have to overcome the fact that we don’t speak Romanian and that the kids we are teaching don’t understand English.

In this point, facing the challenge of communicating through words, we have only one option: using non-verbal communication. And this is when the fun starts. When I went in my first class, I was surprised. There I was, with two of my colleagues, a teacher who barely spoke English and two dozens of kids that only spoke Romanian. In these types of cases, there is only one rule to be followed: don’t use only words. Facing this situation, we had to make gestures, show the games we wanted to play by giving examples, smile or make an angry face according to each behavior the children had.

Nonverbal communication has been intensively studied and discussed by specialists. It is known that this is a very important part of any conversation, . The tone of your voice, the amount of time you look the people you are communicating with in the eye and the gestures you make are of extreme importance in any conversation and they can affect the way the other person receives your message.

If non-verbal communication is important when both the intervenients speak the same language, you can imagine its importance in communication between people who don’t understand each other through traditional language. 

In the beginning it can be difficult and sometimes even frustrating. It is possible that in the beginning you cannot send your message in the right way or the others cannot understand you. Maybe in the beginning you will have to explain something over and over again until your message is perceived. Maybe you will be shy and you will not communicate in the best way. But every day you will improve and someday this will be totally natural for you.

And in the end, everything works just perfectly: the children play the games we organize and enjoy them, they understand us through our gestures and they like us a lot.

So, think about it every day in your life: by improving your non-verbal communication skills you can improve your competence, share your ideas in a better way and be able to communicate with people who speak different languages from your own. 

And, most important, loose the fear of doing something or going somewhere just because you don’t understand the language. 

Ana Esteban Sánchez

Hi everyone!

My name is Ana Esteban Sanchez, and I am 22 years. From my family background, my parents belonged to Amnesty International campaigns, have taught me what the social struggle. An awareness that must be based on the experience in activism and social and international volunteering.But  I learn other way of learning. It was from the experience, travel and visiting other cultures and countries. For that I started to study History of Art at the University of Madrid. 

But since that, I decided for my own count to be a volunteer. First in Red Cross, working with children in risk of exclusion, after in a NGO that work with gype people. But I wanted to know more, so I started to do online courses about violence of gender, arteteraphy, musitheraphy, cooperation, social work. All of them were used to apply a in my voluntary experiencies. In fact I did a international volunteer in Morocco in 2013 during 1 month.For me, It was not enough so I decided to spend the next summer in a school of Guatemala. For that I hade to be ready with a very long preparation. I need to spend my time helping other. I love reading, about cultures, anthropology, human right (I teach them in some many high school in Madrid), to know people, the art, and the potential of the exclusion people.

After studing during four years in the University I decided to spend time learning in a non formal education experience. For that reason I applyed for a EVS Project. I think Romania has all the things that I practice in my life; social work, non formal eduaction, outdoor leisure education and cultural facts. I want to do more social work activities in my free time. I stay here in Romania to help, to teach, to learn and to interact not only with children, also with all the local community.

x

Francisca Ramos

Hello everybody,

I am Francisca, I am 21 years old and I just arrived to Romania two weeks ago for a volunteer adventure in Arad!

I am from Porto, one of the most beautiful cities in Portugal (and for me, in the world) and I am a wannabe journalist. My great passion in life is travel and I have been doing it as much as I can for several years now.

After four years studying journalism in Portugal, I decided I needed a new experience and some time to grow as a person, to get to know more of the world and to use my skills to help others. I found the perfect solution to connect my passion for travel and this new desire: joining European Voluntary Service!

So now I am in Arad, Romania working on the Outdoor Leisure Education (OLE) project for 9 months. So far I am really liking it: I have met amazing people, I love the children I work with and I feel more useful here than ever.

Besides OLE, my organisation also allows me to work in other projects, such as with people with mental disability and people without economic resources. This is a big plus, since I can try different things and learn new educational approaches.

I am very excited about this new experience and my new life! Be able to help others and really make a difference in someone's life is extraordinary and I recomend it to everyone.

           Formal education or non-formal education?

What is non-formal education? What are the differences? Our trainer tried to explain the difference briefly.

In a nutshell, formal education is linked with schools and training institutions; non-formal with community groups and other organizations. Non-formal education is highly enriching and builds an individual’s skills and capacities.

This non-formal education training lasted for two days, putting together 31 volunteers from different countries and with different age in a same room to share experiences and ideas. But the aim of this training was to teach all of us different kind of non-formal educational methods, approaches and how to improve our performance at work.

We spoke about the cycle of learning process consisted of: experience, reflection, conclusion and application. We shared our opinions about the question how we should prepare activities, and what are the important factors that could influence the success of our activities.

Since we all work with kids, we shared the same ideas about the important factors as: material, age, language barriers, number of students, time, risks...

Oh, but this rainy day may looked a bit boring at the beginning, but that’s why we had the best trainers who knew how to cheer us up. Besides, with their creative games like DJPET( dream, joy, passion, energy, travel), we learned something more about ourselves, something new and fun. It was the perfect way to find a new friend or to see that your first impression about someone was so wrong. J

        The main actors of the second day were the volunteers. We were divided in 9 groups and each group had to prepare an activity that was supposed to include the process of non-formal education. Well, you can never know how creative can people be. Each of the groups had to present their activity and then we had a short discussion about the performance, instructions, conclusion...

We started with a nice team-building and non-verbal activity, continued with more and more dynamic games. We learned who likes to party, to eat ice-cream, to dance, to drink wine, to travel, to sing under the shower, to learn Chinese language, and etc.   What are the synonyms for: EVS, respect, tolerance, solidarity and confidence?  We got a lot of different and even weird answers.

How are you going to describe Leonardo Di Caprio, Freddie Mercury, Miley Cyrus, the Psy or Bruce Lee with pantomime? Or, how can you guess whose dream profession was: to be an astronaut, a teacher, a rock singer, a psychologist, a football player and etc. Can you name a fruit that starts with the letter J? Yeah, me neither. J And I really wanted to win and take one of the prices, because Maja’s backpack looked really heavy so, I was wondering what the prices were.

Indeed, we enjoyed in each activity. OK, the math activity was cruel, thanks for reminding me that I finished high school a long time ago. J

Alba Bailon

Hi all!

My name is Alba Bailon, I am from Madrid (Spain) and I had never left my city before. I am 28 years old and after a period working with young people planning trainings and doing logistic issues, I decided to go somewhere for me to have real work experience at doing activities with people (children above all) who need help and support in their personal lives.

So, one day I saw a project called "OLE: Outdoor Leisure Education" which the main activity was working with overweigh children doing outdoor activities. It impressed me so much and I really wanted to take part in this project. So, here I am, in Arad (Romania).

I am so excited about the project, and the best part is that we are not only working with overweigh children, but all kinds, children in risk of exclusion, teenagers who have to learn some language, children with mental disabilities, etc.

Today I am starting my work at Integra, with children with mental disabilities and I am so excited about meeting them and show my best to try to help them and make them a little bit happier.

I am full of energy and with a lot of willing attitude to do all the things I could!

André Pinto - Portugal

Olá a todos,

In the age of 23, André Pinto decided to have a new adventure and got out from his home country to make 2500km to the city of Arad in Romania. Thank you for the 2 hours Time-zone.
He was living in Monte de Caparica, most known in Portugal as being part of the region "Margem Sul", referring to the people that lives on the region immediately in the south of the Tagus River.

How did he came from so far away to Arad in Romania?
Open-mind to new challenges and adventures, willingness to travel and to know the unknown, balanced life with the family, balanced life with studies and work, and here he is!!
Owner of a Bachelor in Management and work experience of 1.5 years in PepsiCo Portugal, he decided that he couldn't stop!! He knew before-hand about his future perspectives in the company, so he got commited to follow one of his life-goals to accomplish, TO BE A EVS VOLUNTEER!!
Contract was going to end in 31st of August, so...what projects start in September?
Here it is, OLE!!

Story of 22nd August:
- Place: Kitchen while having a typical dinner in family
- Key moment: Sharing the new about EVS Volunteering
- Action: "Family, After 4 months outside home and only coming for the weekends and with the fact of the contract ends in 31st August, I have to say that in 7th September, I'm going to Arad in Romania to do volunteering for the next 11months"

Want to know more about this? ASK ME

Huge fan of football and Portugal, don't know about cooking and washing...but he will find out because he have attitude!! And with attitude, you can go everywhere you desire :D

Nice to meet you all! Enjoy this post as much I will enjoy to do the volunteer here.

Mulțumesc!!

Daniel Villanueva

Hi everyone!

I'm Daniel Villanueva. I was born in Jerez de la frontera (Spain) 22 years ago. A little place where the roots of flamenco grows up. Now I'm Arad (Romania) doing this project during 11 month with great collegues. Moreover, I'm a lucky person to be here, because I work and live with my couple, my happiness.

The main objective of the project is to help the teachers to improve the classes of sports, improve the eating habits and motivated to the childrens to have a healthy life. But I have the opportunity to work in more projects on my own. Why I want to spend my free time working more? Because there are many things to do here, and I think that I can put my little grain of help developing somebody or something. I know this because after a good work, the childrens give us lot of hugs and said us multumesc all the time. Maybe it's strange decided to come here, living with only pocket money and work all the days for free. I'm crazy, I know, but for this reason I'm volunteer. 

I have clear my ideas about alimentation and nutrition. I'm vegetarian since 3 years ago, and I try to learn more about it, because there are so much prejudices. But what's more funny that go to the open market, buy fresh vegetables, cook and doing sports?