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?

Romanian football

        I used to watch football a lot with my brother, supporting our favorite teams, shouting like crazy, disturbing our parents and the neighbors. J

To be sincere, it was mostly because of the football players, not that I was that interested in football, and I had a list of the most handsome ones... Oh and I still have a few posters of Beckham in my room.

So, my brother had a hard job to convince me to be reasonable while I am choosing my team, not just particular players that were good looking.J

The last few years I couldn’t find time to watch football, but I am still a huge fan of Juventus and I have to mention Inter too (just as a moral support to my brother).

        Few days ago, I was asked to work at the Stadium (Stadionul Motorul) during the football match - UTA Arad vs Pandurii Targu Jiu. I was concerned that I will be really bored there, but anyway I decided to go. I worked with the volunteers from Future Capital, we were split in 4 teams.

I was surprised that people here really care about the local football clubs, and how many people came to watch the match. It was a bit tiring because I didn’t have the chance to sit but again I had the opportunity to speak Romanian with local people.

Oh, and I also saw the football players, but unfortunately I forgot to take pictures. J  

        The staff lady that worked with me thanked me many times for my help. So, after all I really like Romanian culture and Romanian people. Also, I really wanted UTA team to win.

And at the end, it wasn’t boring at all.

Hi everyone! Welcome back!

Hi everyone! Welcome back!  

   We know that summer always feels like it is over before it even starts (if you are a kid) but if you are a volunteer full of energy and with many ideas and goings-on on your mind that you cannot wait to put into practice for you summer feels more like hundreds of slow-mow grannies standing in line in front of you while you are desperately waiting for your favorite Nutella stuffed chocolate chip muffin with berries on top. And, that can be frustrating.

    Now, that we got rid of the summer we can happily announce that the school year has started and our dreams finally came true. The last week we went at “Mihail Eminescu” middle school, here in Arad, and enjoyed the presence of the pupils who, on our big surprise, were more than happy to follow our instructions and do whatever we suggested. Because we have started to work with preschoolers and with first, second and third grade classes we were able to combine warm-ups, play some games and do sports. The warm-ups, of course, are necessity but it is a well-known fact that the children are not very crazy about them and that is why we have decided to spice them up a bit. We used the basic exercises for improving the motor skills and wrapped them up in fun and dynamic games. We also played some of the games that our trainers showed us on the on-arrival training. Considering the fact that we, the grown-ups, enjoyed these games a lot it was obvious that the pupils were going to love them.

    Of course, we couldn’t do anything of this without our facilitator Ana who spoke with the personnel in the school to accept us as volunteers and without the gym teacher who was very supportive and gave us a chance to be her “assistants”. The good news is that we won’t stop here. We have more schools to attend and more pupils to educate and have fun with.

It was a good start of the year. We are full of positive energy and still have eight more months to achieve our goals.