Impresiile voluntarilor din cadrul proiectului Building Solidarity - Șerban Oșlobanu

Experiențele noi ne provoacă, ne aduc multe bucurii, prietenii și lecții de viață. În perioada septembrie 2019 - iulie 2020, 7 tineri entuziaști din țară și străinătate au făcut parte din echipa Green School, în cadrul proiectului Building Solidarity, un proiect finanțat de Corpul European de Solidaritate și implementat de Green School și Centrul de Voluntariat Cluj-Napoca.

Șerban este o persoană creativă, iar creativitatea aceasta s-a văzut în diferitele metode și paleta bogată de oferte la care au participat copiii.
​
1. What did you do in your ESC project?
The main activity of my ESC project was to deliver afternoon activities and lessons based on Peace Education, Global Education, Education for Sustainable Development and Human Rights, at Green School Cluj Napoca, a private school with an agile learning program in which children spend most of their time in nature. During the stage I had to create games and informal ways to present the topics in order to be understood by the children and also to get involved in their daily school routine: meetings, lessons, games and many outdoor activities for exploring nature. In the morning I had to observe the morning lessons facilitated by educators which helped me to understand better their passions and interests.

2. What motivated you to do an ESC project?
My main motivation was to learn how to implement different educational approaches as a skill that can be useful for my future career and also to improve my English skills by interacting with international volunteers. A friend of mine attended an EVS project which was her best experience for that moment. She was telling me stories about travelling around Europe and amazing people she met, which made me pretty enthusiastic about starting an ESC stage.

3. Why did you choose this specific project?
During high school, as a volunteer in a youth association I used to work with children, our main activity being organising play days every Saturday for the locals. I had a lot of fun and I learned different ways of interacting with the kids. Since then I became interested in non formal education and creating games and activities.I chose Building Solidarity because it was the perfect opportunity to learn more about the educational branch by experiencing, but also observing professionists at work, which could give me a better insight about their work.

4. What did you learn?
The main things I learned are based on my work: how to create activities for kids and educational games, how to solve conflicts between kids paying attention to their emotions and also how to cooperate with colleagues. Living in the same flat with my colleagues I learned many interesting things about their countries and how their life is there, and more importantly I had the opportunity to observe the ways we spend our free time, different eating schedules and ways of cooking, their habits, priorities and goals. All these things gave me a different perspective which helped me to develop myself.

5. What was your biggest challenge and what did you enjoy most during your project?
I think the most difficult situation was to deal with all the changes in our schedule at Green School and also to approach every kid in a proper way, some of them being really difficult. Later on, the pandemic forced us to adapt all our activities online, which was not that pleasant. The things I enjoyed the most are living with my flatmates, especially having a lot of fun together watching movies or playing different games, cooking together and travelling together around the country.

6. What would you tell someone who is about to do an ESC project, wherever that is?
Just do it, go with the flow and enjoy every moment. It will not last forever and it’s the only one you can have, be aware of this!

​