I was waiting for autumn for continue properly with my project and for continue to “push” volunteers in joining big ideas for their communities....
Indeed more activities happened ....in the same style like in spring (I think until I will not be a Turkish/or speak advanced turkish and staff member of TOG more in-depth and larger perspective orientated things will be almost impossible for me to do- i have to accept this fact and work with it)
Let’s take one by one the developments of last months:
- The sustainable development camp promised to be more then what it was- as I was speaking about planning process in Turkey – nothing consistent/relevant was prepared beforehand ; topics and the composition of the group changed in the last moment and even me I was not part of that project anymore (even if I was in the initiative group and I had also expertise in the topics) – i will not detailed , is based again on TOG working system and the power the give to their local volunteers in organizing and make in a project and the staff doesn’t interfere even if they go in wrong direction (they have to learn by themselves)- at least I was on the group for some time in the preparation time and i do know the outcomes of the camp (that changed from non-formal education to lectures and conference type of think) so I don’t regret i was not there after all
- I took part again in the TOG Youth National Council , this time with workshops about Image Theatre. It was in Samsun (in the north part of the country) and I meet also the new members of EVS crew from Istanbul (that are so in the first phase in the intercultural cycle presented in previous post :))
- I took part in the Mid-Term Evaluation of EVS organized by Turkish National Agency (in Van – the most east city with a strong Armenian and Kurdish history); We were a small group of volunteers (5) but for all of us it made very good to share and debrief on our experience up to this point. Sessions on what was good and bad in our EVS projects and discussion that came out of it were really beneficial. For all of us (Polish, German, Spanish, Lithuanian, me) working in Turkey and with Turkish people proved to be a very good lesson and test of our patience, flexibility and adaptability.
- I continued with my workshops on social theatre for various new groups from Izmir region;
- I started again Turkish lessons, and my progress up to now seems that didn’t value to much because they put me on the first level (because knowing words is not enough if you don’t have a grammar structure). In first 2 weeks i didn’t learn something new but i did fixed in a proper structure all that I knew and after that new topics came and I started to be more and more into this language – you see how important is to have good teachers, methods and manuals- I assimilate pretty fast and correct and to bad that my project is starting to end and I can’t use all my achievements like I wanted in spring for example.
- More street animation groups are joining to prepare an action for the 1 day of December for speaking up on HIV!!! Great!!! I am also IN!!!!
- I am coaching a group that wants to organize a international training of 3 days on youth participation (seems that they really like to talk a lot on this topics but less to actually do something about it) – I am helping the program team and providing inputs for developing sessions – I will be also trainer for some of the sessions;(once again the TOG system is hitting me: the volunteers can join any working group they want not conditioned by the skills or experience they have – so in my program team i have 6 people and 4 of them have never participated in a training course – imagine about actually doing one? And 2 of them have bean participating but never doing one- and the funny thing is that they really want to do the program like they want based on no arguments or no matter what more experienced people are telling them;
Them: We want video session in the first morning?
ME: what is the aim of that session? I mean for what you want to use that video?
Them: Video about active participation!
ME : Do you have already a video in mind?
Them: NO, but we want a video session!
Me: My suggestion is first to think about what we want to achieve in that session and then to think about witch method is better for that aim!
Them: BUT the team decided that we want to have a video session!
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“Challenge YOU and YOUR community” represent an EVS project (European Voluntary Service) implemented by A.R.T. Fusion(Romania) and TOG (Community Volunteers, Turkey) financed by trough Youth in Action Programme by Romanian National Agency.
The opinions expressed in this article belong 100% to its author!
