EVS stories: On Arrival Training (OAT) in my perspective – by Umut

Hi everyone, I am Umut. I was living in Antalya before coming here and my project, Summer Development, will last for 10 months.

This is my first blog and I cannot say I’m good at it, but I will try to explain my experience as good as I can.

When I first talked to my coordinator about OAT, I thought I would be the only listener out of 200-300 people in a seminar room, but OAT was very different from what I thought.

In Bucharest we were 21 volunteers and we were informed about EVS. More precisely, the trainers gave us some information and then we had to work in groups to share this.  It was a very effective and fun learning method by doing a living-knowledge learning.

One of the most beautiful aspects of OAT is the international environment. While you are there you can make new friends from many different countries, such as Chilean, Argentinian, Estonian and Macedonian friends, and for me was the first time meeting people from this countries. I met many beautiful people from other nations too: Spanish, French, Czech, Italian and Portuguese people…. by the way I am sending my love from Baia Mare to them :*******

I, once again, understood the magnificence of volunteering during OAT. Because everyone are volunteers and people who have love in their hearts. I have not met a malicious volunteer. I do not think a bad person can do volunteering in any activity that they do. So when I first saw the volunteers there, I felt as we would have known each other for a long time.

With the international environment in OAT, you can have information about people with different cultures and ideas. And after a while, even if your ideas are very different, you start to realize that your ideas are not wrong, but that it is right for you, and your are more aware about your empathy ability.

Thank you so much for reading . That is all for now.

Umut U. (Turkey) is hosted in Baia Mare by Team for Youth Association, in the “Summer Development” project, an European Voluntary Service financed by the European Commission through the Erasmus Plus Program.