On-Arrival EVS Training - Day 2

       After a (short) night sleep, we started our second day of training. This day was focused on the idea of volunteering, our rights and duties as an EVS, the impact on communities.

     The reason why we were all here was obviously the will to be a volunteer in a community or a group where they need someone to help them out. During those two hours we thought about ideas or obvious facts that were normal or just logical for us like Organisations choose to host an EVS a cheap employee. We had to think about it and find a common ground in our duo and then show and explain it to the rest of the group. We had to position ourselves on a line drawn on the floor depending if we agree or not. With Alicja, we agree on almost everything and we didn’t have to talk much about the common point of view we had to adopt and then show to the rest. The only time when I decided not to step on the line was when I had to answer a question when I couldn’t agree on the statement. After, we talked about what the EVS was really about, its definition, objectives and some question we had like for our insurance.

      One of the main objectives is to interact with our local communities. Our main exercise was to go on the streets, find someone to needed help and then find someone who could help that person. We couldn’t be the latter as it would have been too easy. With Simone, we decided to go to a supermarket where we could find an elderly person and may be a teenager who could help the former. It wasn’t that easy as all elderly women we saw were pretty active or didn’t have much to carry with them. We finally succeeded in finding a girl teenager who could help someone just a bit younger than the person we thought about at first. As we were in a supermarket, we decided to offer a chocolate bar to the girl to thank her for the help. Two last things: we completely forget to ask for her name and we met a local celebrity who was doing a show sharing the same objectives as us.

     We finished this day by watching a movie about the 2^nd independence of Estonia, in august 1991. It was very fascinating to watch it, see how 30 000 people singing in a single voice. When I think about this, I still have goosebumps. Without going into too many details not to spoil the movie, The Singing Revolution, You can see how people can change the face of history with their only arm available, their songs, without shedding a single drop of blood. After the movie ended, we couldn’t speak or say anything. We were so impressed by the intensity of it we stayed in the room talking about the movie, the consequences of what happened and some clarifications about how it really happened by asking our Estonian trainers.

Trailer of the Documentary, The Singing Revolution

for more information, visit http://www.singingrevolution.com