My name is Mariam Akobia, I am from Georgia and I did a long European Voluntary Service in Constanta, a big city in Romania. The name of my project was: “Human skills for human life” and it started on 1 December 2017 and finished on 1 July 2018, so I had this experience during seven months.
And now I want to talk about, what I have learned during this seven month, why it was special and how I change myself . So, this is a story how I became independent and self confident.
Let’s start!
I experienced my first challenge in this EVS with my flatmates, it was the first time I left my house and the first time I lived with other people than my family, moreover they didn’t speak Georgian and they hadn´t the same habits, so I needed to learn new rules of acquaintanceship and cohabitation in a multicultural context. And now I feel that everything went perfect, here I made friends that I will always rembember and of course, I am waiting for them in Georgia!
During my EVS I developed a several types of activities:
• Promoting EU, voluntary service in different institutions
• Cultural presentations in schools, kindergartens, and public institutions
• Learning new skills: for example computer skills (creating pictures, flyers in Photoshop. )
• Receive hugs
• Learning how to facilitate the group and how to teach them assertiveness.
• Team building activities with other volunteers
• Learn about culture, history, food of host country (Romania) and not only.
• Learn how to enjoy life, how to travel alone and how to deal with budget.
But most important that I have learnt here is that Romania is the beautiful country with beautiful nature, nice, friendly people who are always ready to help u, in every situation. To be honest, sometimes it was very hard for me to understand them. I remember one funny story when I was shocked that Romanian boys were shaking hands only to boys but not to girls. I felt shame, but than, once, I understood that it is part of their culture, I realized how interesting it is to live in different country that have it own rules, traditions and habits. when someone from Georgia is asking me, how it is Romania, I always want to say everything good.
Because i felt in love with this country…but of course its normal, I have lived here for seven month. My EVS showed me that if you take risks, if you get out of your ‘safe zone’, it pays back. You only need to open yourself to new people, new experience and new opportunities. I’m even trying to convince others of the value of EVS and stimulate them to go through a similar experience.
As I mention above My EVS was process of self development. I have learnt how to be stronger, how to be independent, how to be self confidant , I have learnt that you always need to prove everything to everyone and this process sometimes is very hard, but here I learnt that impossible is possible, you just need to believe in yourself. If you don’t believe in yourself, if you don’t believe that you are capable, a worthy human being, chances are that nobody will. You will act on that belief and people will treat you based on what you think about yourself, based on how you treat yourself and based on how you act and behave in the world. It is difficult sometimes but, of course ,this difficulties create a real, interesting life.
Yes, I came in Romania for my personal development and I think my mission has completed here.
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