The day started in a strange way. In my room I was bothered by a huge pigeon who was singing on my window. When he started to talk in italian and to dance in a bizzarre way shaking his paws like he was dancing in the georgian way, I thought that something wrong and wierd was going on… so I opened my eyes and the winged animal was disappeared, fortunatly! I stood up and went downstairs to have breakfast trying to guess how Freud could consider my dream but I thought I didn’t want even to try to know the answer.
Then the morning activities began and the participants have to reflect about the types and form of volunteering. They did it setting up small groups of two or three people which had to analyse some project they took part in the past and then explaining to the group how it was developed. While they were working I had a special contribution fram Eka and Mariam, both from Georgia, who wrote me about their feelings for the project:
“The forth day was the perfect time to realize how lucky we are to be together in this project as it was about sharing experiences and our practical knowledge with each other. The participants had a great chance to see how the concept of volunteering works in a real life. We got to know the history of youth work and its impact on society during centuries. The most interesting moment of the day was the open space, where our amazing friends shared their valuable working experience in the field of volunteering service with us and we had a chance to discuss real political and social situations in different countries and making comparisons with our realities.”
After the morning session, I walked to the dining room and I join the table where our italian one-man-show Edoardo was pontificating with his low but loud voice making people laugh and laugh again. In the meanwhile, the atmosphere on the other table was totally different and people were debating about politics and gender discrimination. That’s what happen during this project, where different cultures meet and face other realities, at the same time it happens that the participants from Armenia and from Azerbaijan, which generally are not in good relationship due to some political issues, decided to make a selfie together and to post it on a social network with a written who exalt the friendship.
The afternoon went on analyzing the community needs of volunteers and the trainers proposed some exercises and gave some tasks to the participants who have to work in group of 4-5 people. They mainly reflect together and wrote down on a paper the benefits of the volunteering both for the community and for the volunteer. In that moment my blog assistants of the day, Eka and Mariam, interviewed Samir and Aneta about the development of the Training Course.
“The reason why I came here is that I wanted to have an opportunity to get deeper knowledge about volunteering and also share my volunteering experiences with foreign people. I wanted to find new friends, new contacts. What I like he most in this project is a friendly atmosphere among all the participants. I liked the open space sessions during the fourth day as I felt that everyone was willing to listen each other and share their opinions. I am sure that the skills and knowledge gained during this Training Course will be very useful for me in future.” said Samir from Azerbaijan
“Well, I think it’s a really good project, what I liked the most is that here we have very good possibility to meet interesting people from different countries. Sometimes when we talk and share our culture with each-other, we better realize the similarities and differences among our traditions. Actually, in future if there is some interesting project in Georgia, I would like to come back and discover the country more closely. The Training Course itself is very interesting, but I am still waiting for some specific information about the empowerment instrument of volunteering service “ said Aneta from Portugal, but native from Poland.
In the evening we went in a bar, the same of always actually, Kobuleti doesn’t seem to have a lot ot alternatives in this period of the year or maybe we were too lazy to try to find a new one, but who cares, people around you make the place good! As usual, at midnight the music stopped and suddenly, from the beach next to the bar, the fireworks started. Not a long show, but at least was something unpredictable who animate our end-night routine. Following the flow of unpredictable, we saw a group of people of very different ages playing a game similar to the dodgeball and, leaded by our youngest armenian friend Zarina, some of us (me included of course! The child I have inside is always ready for playing…) joined to the match. After some explanation, not very clear actually, of the rules, we started to play. Nobody knew the score at the end but everyone enjoyed it.
Another day reached his end… Stay tuned
Daniele (The Reporter)
Vicolocortini 