Alessandro, EVS volunteer in Poznań
This text was written for the national agency of youth programme, it got the first price as the best EVS report for the year 2005 among EVS volunteers in Poland.
…it concerns the first 6 months of my project.
PS: some parts are taken from the previous text …I liked it a lot and I had some sentences still in my mind! …I couldn’t skip them for the EVS competition, too nice for me!
What’s the best way for starting your EVS project? ….being robbed just a week before your leaving!
I was in a railway station of Rome and except my passport I lost everything, including part of my tickets to Poland which I had just bought… I didn’t even complain, I was too happy for my project in Poland that I have quickly managed to get my new documents…
After my PDT (quite late) in the north of Italy, I decided to go straight ahead to Poland! In the city of Bologna I caught the first bus to Poznań …
So already from the very beginning my project looked like a big running from place to place…
But on the way to go I had 22 hours by coach, no plane, I opted for a slow sightseeing out of the window …slowly discovering the new countryside… after a short break in the south of Poland I left the mountains behind my back and I admired the wide green plains of Poland, something really new for me.
The 4th of July some friends were waiting for me at the always crowdie PKS station …yes, I said friends!
That’s how I came to Poland; I wonder why, but during my last workcamps, I met quite many polish people and because of them I got interested in this country.
Honestly I didn’t know that much before coming here, but I got good inputs and that’s why I’m here, sincerely happy of my choice.
What is my project about? …that’s a good question! One year is quite long time and the organization for which I’m working (OWA) is doing so many different things that I could really choose what to do.
Last summer, I was the so called “Peace-messenger” sent by OWA to all the polish workcamps.
The “Peace messenger” is a volunteer that is supposed to make the international volunteers coming for a workcamp, reflecting about the message of Peace hidden in their work and to talk about the organization that made it possible. Besides joining the volunteers work and free time, he has the extra task of leading a workshop concerning Peace
So I had such a great opportunity to travel all around Poland and to get to know with this country in a very amazing way; almost three months of jumping from a train to another one.
Once in the office, I had just the time to have a look of the list (and infosheets) of these workcamps and write down the phone numbers of the campleaders then I was already running to catch the train leaving for my first destination: Strzelce Opolskie.
One of the main topics of my workshops was the education on Human rights, but sometimes it wasn’t easy to propose such activities to the groups and it wasn’t the main priority.
There are many reasons why it wasn’t that easy; volunteers from the same group have different ideas of a workcamp, somebody sees a workcamp as an “alternative holiday”; for somebody it’s just a summer language school, and of course many volunteers are aware of the worth of a workcamp as an example of Peace construction.
Very often I found much more effective to propose them other kinds of workshop concerning for example ecological education, Team-working and Intercultural learning… Every time according to the group experience, expectations and problems I proposed activities that could even help the group to achieve a more successful work; for me this was Peace education as well.
In fact I haven’t been only in workcamps, because often I had to travel across one side of Poland to the opposite one, and it was in those moments that I discovered this new country and many different things between Włochy and Polska.
After the summer when I unpacked my backpack, I found so many things, so many memories which I collected on my way that the first feeling was just getting into another train, no matter which destination!
…So another challenge started at the end of September: sitting in the office with a cup of coffee in front of a boring PC; I thought that there was nothing else beside this, but later I realized that I could be involved in many interesting things that are not just office work…and it was up to me. During the summer I got quite experienced in workcamps and right now I’m working as incoming placement officer, I’m in general responsible for all the polish workcamps and I’m even organizing one in Lublin.
As I was campleader in a workcamp in Majdanek, I found myself 100% involved in a Polish-German (i Jestem Włochem J) project concerning memorial places (Remember the Past-Make your Future). The 17th of February this project will finish with the opening of an exhibition (“Maski i Słowa …Wolontariusze w Miejscach Pamięci”)… and that’s what I like here, everything is connected and whatever I do, it’s a never ending process.
I’ m writing for Ramol (our magazine) and I’m also helping with this work, and I see in my articles how much I changed during these 7 months; I’m more and more involved in the work here, I feel as an important part of OWA and I feel Poland less and less as a foreigner country…
Some how, because of all these different kind of projects and my never ending trip trough Poland, I have every day a more clear vision of Poland and Poles, Yesterday and Today.
It was very interesting to mach the social-historical information I collected on the road with the picture I have still in my mind; I could never expect such a great way of discovering a country…from the Former Concentration Camps and ex Ghettos, to the Communist BLOKS distributed everywhere, to the modern skyscrapers that are growing up around the Palace of Culture in Warszawa. I see myself in Poland I JESTEM SZCZĘŚLIWY Z WSZYSTKO.
