After 2 months of EVS in Turkey

After a bit more of 2 months of being in Turkey I am coming back with more news,

It took me some time to mobilize my self and write because I was still handling with a very different reality – obvious you will say: “I am in another country, no?” Well yes and no in the same time.

I lived and worked in other countries for longer time and I also worked in different ways in Turkey and with different Turkish organizations but this time being such a long project and such a wide perspective for sure I feel like I am in a place I was never before :)

The time has different value here, the volunteer and youth work has different meaning and way of manifestation, active participation doesn’t exist to much in the sense we are using in Romania and speaking about Forum Theatre, Street Campaigning or Global Education this looks like are coming from Mart and they are still watched with suspicion. Oh ya!!! My work here is not easy because even if I was saying before :I have the skills, the motivation and large possibilities in Turkey something else is needed: motivated people as well in Turkey (Izmir more specifically were I am located).

Only 2 months passes, patience and flexibility are the biggest lessons until now, maybe I am in cultural shock :)...seems that is not easy ...buuuuut it cant be impossible no?

A short overview on the last 2 months

• The volunteers in Izmir are many in numbers but few in active involvement; is a student orientated organization with student clubs in each university in the city and the region and each university is implementing a large number of project in different areas of society (mainly charity orientated or for disadvantaged groups: lessons for poor children, spending time with old people or violenced women or teenagers, etc) but not doing anything in what means awareness in different topics, empowering community members, stimulating active participation – well this is my job to make them active in this direction also – and Is not easy I can say;
• I had some workshops on Image and Social Theatre (for various groups from 3 universities) – for them this workshops are more to know me (because I am the only EVS at the moment in the organization), what I want to do and to have fun – still i didn’t created a team for in-depth training;
• I found a group interested in street animation – made by some volunteers in TOG and young people interested in street art- i will join them for a while and maybe with this group I will develop the street actions with social message;
• The TOG had a National Youth Council where I met volunteer from all the country and other EVS from Istanbul (i did some workshops on Street Animation with a huge success – but that is not leading to street campaigning on a social team yet:
• The TOG structure has no centralized coordination and is not easy to organize their volunteers; they are working mainly on self organization for volunteers but this makes it very difficult for me because I don’t know the language and they don’t know English;
• I help some staff people to write some projects proposal and to make some EVS selection for a project in Romania;
• Turkish Language is not so easy i was expecting and I am not sure learning with a student (with no teaching experience) is a good option – but lets wait and see (i need also o study more of course)
• Living in house of 4 people were only one person speaks english can lead either to: make me learn turkish fast; either make them learn english fast; either make us ignoring eachother!!!
  

More to come for sure,

“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!

“Challenge YOU and Your community”- EVS project

I am starting a new adventure today!

After different challenges in application process and after high level of stress waiting the results my project - "Challenge YOU and YOUR community"was accepted!!! This is a one year adventure because Turkey capture my soul so why I should not use my skills, experience and energy for making a change as well in Turkish society?

I have what is needed: skills, motivation and large options of possibilities of change in Turkish Society. I have big expectation for this year and I hope I will reach all my objectives.

Below you can find more information about this project and initiative and in the upcoming months i will come back with more information about how Turkey “receives” me and updates about how I am implementing my project.

The aim of the project is to stimulate the active participation (as a value of European Union) of young people in problems that concern today society by using participative art, creative street animation methods and innovative campaigns.

I will realise a stage of 12 months in Turkey. The project is representing my idea based on my volunteering experience and skills and I want to put them in practice in a society that needs and that is also attracting me from the cultural point of view.

The methods that will be used in this project :

• social theatre as a method of social intervention
• non formal education workshops on development education
• street campaigning

The objectives of the project are:

• to train more than 60 young people to be multipliers in social theatre
• to raise awareness and personal involvement in what matters the Millennium Goals for Turkish general young people.
• to implement various campaigns that raise awareness in different topics (additional more than 50 young people will be trained and develop street campaigning skills
• to stimulate the volunteering among young people
  

Individual EVS project ; Sending organization: A.R.T. Fusion Romania (click)

Hosting Organization: TOG Turkey ;

Stage period: 10february 2009– 10 February 2010

EVS – European Voluntary Service (implemented trough Youth in Action Programme – Action 2)

(Project applied at Romanian National Agency of Youth in Action Programme (click))

"India" like a street dog

These days are 3 months from the day I left India....

Is taking me a lot of time to gather my thoughts about this experience and share it with people across countries...

I said to myself during my 2 month there:

• I will never go back to this country,
• I don’t like this people...
• sometimes I was hating them,
• they are full of stupid pride about being an Indian
• Is terrible to feel totally ALONE in a overpopulated country
• Is horrible to carry years of history (that is not even yours) in your skin colour and not receiving any chance to be different
• ..............

Time is passing...the experience I had there is following me like street dog looking/waiting for something.....

I move on the personal disappointment and try to understand!

I will go back...BUT never alone!

I will go back with details on the blog also ...(alone;)

Meanwhile, home work until the next post : what is the first thing that comes in your head when you think about India???

Street Animation for social problems-tool kit

Based on the experience I had myself in street campaigning and on the projects we developed in A.R.T. Fusion (www.artfusion.ro) using this methodology I was responsible for developing a tool kit for using Street Animation for social change. (click on the "tool kit....)

It was the biggest writing project I took under my responsibility and I also took care of the graphic and editing of the material. We believe is a useful material for NGO workers that are willing to try out these methods for a social cause.

Is written in a youth friendly style and include a description and tips/tricks for o large series of methods, space for personal reflection on your role in society and how can this methods be used and the last part of the kit includes concrete steps of how to develop a project for social change that has a component of street campaigning.

For the moment the material is only in Romanian, but everybody can still have a look on it. If you have any questions, comments or you want to have this material in English please let me know,

Enjoy it!!!

Booklet- Non-Violent Conflict Resolution Training Program in Sri Lanka

In Sri Lanka among other activities I was also responsible for implementing the evaluation part of a 2 years training program in Non-Violent Conflict Resolution implemented in various and diverse regions of the country for religious leaders or actives members (Muslims, Christians, Hindu, Buddhists). For a short brief at the time of the project implementation Sri Lanka was affected by a civil war.

Based on the evaluation and the interpretation of its results I developed a booklet (click on booklet) that gathers the experience of the projects, the results and impact and future actions. In the booklet are also information about SCI and SCI Sri Lanka.

The material is in English and it was written and graphic edited by me.

For any questions, comments or impressions you can contact me or SCI Sri Lanka (the contact data are in the booklet).

Recap Sri Lanka

Let’s look back.... more time pass from that period…

Let’s look back to Sri Lanka experience….

Let’s see some facts of Sri Lanka or of my time here:

- Sri Lanka is supposed to be part of the developing world- that means a poor country where many people are struggling with extreme poverty

- It is a former British colony (for those who don’t know) and it has a very Big Brother, India that is situated on top of it.

- British manage to make from them the biggest exporter of tea….as I know for sure Ceylon is extremely familiar to you. (for this reason the tea that is on the market in this country represent in fact the trash from the end of the bucket – the good one is in your country)

- The poorest people of the country are the ones that work on the tea plantation (what an irony)

- The TEA culture is a big heritage from this old “parents” and as usual with milk (powder milk) and with sugar by default.

- From decades the country energy and power is sucked by the ongoing civil war between the state army and a terrorist group that supposedly represents a minority group of the country (Tamils Hindus).

- It is a Tsunami affected area, half of the coastal areas was affected; they did recover big time in terms of reconstruction BUT not in terms of psychological damage ; fear of water; many cemeteries on the beach keep on distance maybe tourists and any intention of building some tourist resorts (that eventual will attract money for the community)

- I lived almost 13 weeks in this small island

- I visited 9 different places/cities of the country (including some parts of the country under the army cheek and security )

- I have discussed or interact with almost 200 people

- I have tried almost every curry possible (more then 20 for sure) (including those made from non-ripped fruits that are still are mystery for me)

- Are more then 20 types of bananas or mangos and I still didn’t manage to make the difference between them

- The fruits and vegetables are most of the times taken from the plantation extremely “green” –let’s say non-ripped and sold on the market not after to much time

- For sure the word winter/spring/autumn or even summer doesn’t have any sense in this country (where is all the year something like summer ) – rainy season or dry (this is the way to make the separation) but not so many people seems to know when during the year is more exactly rainy season

Let’s see now some more personal-subjective and maybe les objective but based on some of the sri lankan reality.

What I like in Sri Lanka

- relaxing lifestyle – the mind can take a break in this country, is stimulating you to give up stress, to relax, to be in peace with you, more connection with the nature and less busy social life (as social life doesn’t really exist in the European way – except the capital city-Colombo)

- the traditional stile of clothing of people; - the western influence is really very small even if they consider is very big ; streets for sure are full of saries and sarongs :)

- the more natural way of living – as food and way of cooking; and believes on health issues or even on lives; (ayurveda “science” is generally accepted and used in daily life)

- they still have indigenous people: VEDA people ; they still have their own life style BUT they start to adapt to the "tourist attracting" one;

- Food : fruits (so many, so divers, so tasty, so natural) – papaya, jack fruit, mango, bananas, avocado, passion fruit, pineapple, cluster apple, wood apple, star fruit, king coconut, beli, guava , grapefruit, and so on ; sea food – prawns, crabs, cattle fish, fish (including fresh tuna or shark), lobster, - just delicious

- nature – the jungle is like everywhere, is a great view and very beautiful and still very natural ….(even if I’m sure that from 20 years ago they destroyed 20 percent of the (rainy) forest) …hopefully they will stop; the ocean and the little towns near the see are like in the pictures/movies :)

- wild life – elephants walking on the road, friendly monkeys always waiting some food from you, bugs, snakes, wild boars, insects or other kind of animals that can cross the street anytime in your front; the wild life is still wild but also friendly; not so wild but very beautiful – the elephant orphanage

What I didn’t like

- “distant culture” – people don’t open themselves, don’t speak about them, don’t open personal subject, don’t go deep in any subject, are not interested in who are you (deeply) and where are you from (deeply) and is very hard to reach them and find out what they think; non-confrontation approach and avoidance of any bad situation between people;

- shy culture – afraid to tell what they think, to express their opinion, in some situation even to speak in front of new people and specially white people (maybe some side effects of colonization) most of the times they are laughing as a defence and barrier ; ADD – shy in “confrontation” situations but they are not shy in gossip and speak all the bad thinks behind the people – and after that smiling to them as purely as possible;

- the ongoing stereotyping behaviour towards WHITE people – different prices, different privileges, different (and very high) expectation in matter of money issue specially, and very very rigid opinions about a white person that seams that nothing will change them (rich, happy, mother language –English, too open as life style, etc) – any new information that change some of this strong impression will not be mentally accepted; is extremely hard to be treated as an equal here (no mater what you do)

- the low level of critical and analyzing sense in what matter their reality or the world reality – they dont go deep in the reasons behind a subject or situation (is connected with what I written before) –

- playing the “victim” of the world – complaining about poverty and hard life of sri lankan (maybe a tendency developed in time and with many “money” benefits from the whites) but if you go a bit deeper you will realise that is not all the time with fundament; they are complaining but not really for them, for others and if is any benefit is for them and not for the others;

- spicy food – way to much for my European “tong” and almost in everything (in cooked food or in the snacks or chips)

If I calculate …is much more deeper what I didn’t like but I still work on putting this experience in a more global view, and giving more sense to what is happening at this moment there (as social-cultural aspects).

The mental work is in progress!