I started my volunteering for one year thru European Solidarity Corps in Slovakia, Kysucke Nove Mesto in the end of October 2019. The decision to volunteer came quite spontaneously. I never lived abroad, only travelled in foreign contries before. I felt I need some change from my homeland Estonia.
My main task, work in volunteering should be assisting teachers in schools with english, german and russian languages. And from December till March it was, but then when coronavirus began, it cancelled. The quality of volunteering began to decrease. It started to be quite boring, because borders, hairdressers. clothing stores and schools, where I assisted teachers, closed. And people were somehow afraid. Honestly some zoom online „workshops“, meeting, in which I participated, were also not my favourite.
But fortunately from June the restrictions were eased, it was a little bit like the light at the end of the tunnel. In the summer I visited 4 countries – Austria (Vienna) Croatia, Poland and Hungary (Budapest). I travelled also in Slovakia- High Tatras, Little Tatra, Pieniny, Slovak Paradise, lake Liptovska Mara, Košice and of course Bratislava. All these trips were one the highlights of my volunteering.
Interesting was also „arrival training“ of volunteering. It took place in Poprad. All new volunteers from different places in Slovakia get together. It was 4 days and I had good time there. But the mid-term meeting (with other volunteers), which should be identical to arrival training, was because of corona online, in zoom, and it was sad to see all the volunteers online and not in real life. In these volunteer meetings I get to know two ukrainian volunteers and one turkish volunteer, with whom we met after that several times or more.
I also worked in my youth club, Mládežnícka Klubovňa and participated in the activities that the club organized. For example twice in cleaning the trash the surroundings of the town I volunteer in- Kysucke Nove Mesto. Twice also in organizing outside cinema, sports activities (football, ping pong), painting (walls, cages etc), inside activities like board games and other things.
Now, when my volunteering is almost over, I started to miss my family, also my home country, that I didn`t missed before. Volunteering broadened my horizons, I met new people from other countries, cultures. Though my volunteering was not perfect, it had bad, also very good days. It was not my goal to have perfect volunteering beacuse my opinion is that nothing is perfect. I absolutelly don`t regeret that I volunteered beacuse all in all it was interesting and something totally new.
This activity was supported by the European union from European solidarity corps managed by IUVENTA.
