Coming to the end of their second month in Blagoevgrad, our four short-term volunteers in ABS, Adèle, Luisa, Colin, and Ugo, tell us their adventures in Bulgaria and their feelings about these experiences:
Adèle, France:
It's now been more than a month since we arrived in Blagoevgrad, and many things have happened during these weeks in Bulgaria. As said before, I had very blurry expectations about what would happen in Bulgaria, which would really be our tasks as volunteers in the ABS team. Now I can say that this EVS will be a memorable experience, in which I learned a lot in every way.
To begin, being in the ABS team allowed me to develop my skills in the information and communication field, since a big part of our work consists in the promotion of ABS’ activities and the organization of social events. We use social media a lot, and so it introduced me to the use of Instagram that I was not using before. But Instagram is now the major social media to reach the youth, and I am glad to have learned how to use this media. Furthermore, I really enjoyed learning how a website work, and how simple it actually is to publish stories or call for participants, etc, once we actually know how to do it (I was not so confident the first time I did it). I read a lot of articles on the Internet, on blogs or classic newspapers, so it is interesting to now be on the other side and writing articles about our activities and the stories of ABS’ participants.
The second and main thing that has been really enriching during this volunteering is the travels I did and the people I met. Meeting new people is always great but meeting people from so many different nationalities made me learn a lot about different countries, countries I had no idea of what they were before. Coming from Western Europe and having done my Erasmus in Western Europe, I met here people from nationalities I never met before and I really like sharing and talking with people coming from such different backgrounds. There is a real international and friendly atmosphere in Blagoevgrad, which makes the stay even more enjoyable.
Also, being in Bulgaria is a great opportunity to visit this country and the countries around. This is how I ended up hitch-hiking to Skopje, Macedonia one weekend, while I never even thought about traveling to Macedonia before. Now I want to go back and explore all the parts of it. We traveled in so many different places in Bulgaria, but also in Turkey and we are now heading to Greece.
Active Bulgarian Society is all about non-formal education and looking from my experience, non-formal education was very effective since I learned a lot during my first month here, and I hope continuing learning as much and left with the impression that this experience has had a real impact on me. For the last weeks coming, I now want to finish our personal project with my roommate Luisa and continue to discover Bulgaria and all the different people living in this country.
Luisa, Italy:
The hardest part of doing a short-period experience abroad is probably the fact that you leave just when you start feeling at home. Today, on my fifth week here in Blagoevgrad, I sadly realize that this amazing journey will end soon. These past weeks have been so full of activities, events, and travel that I am afraid I could condense them just into just a few lines, but I will try.
First of all, while working with ABS I have improved my social media management tools promoting the current projects in the most common social networks, like Facebook and Instagram, but also learning how to use new software and platforms, such as link tree for Instagram and Weband. Also, I started learning how to create a call for participants for the projects as well as to make and publish articles and stories on the ABS website. I enjoyed using all those tools as I strongly believe that this familiarity will be useful for my future work experiences. Thus, I must say that I am glad to have enriched my knowledge and capabilities in this sector.
Concerning the activities outside the office, one of our tasks was to promote the European Solidarity Corps projects at Sofia University and at the Southwest University here in Blagoevgrad. Provided with arms full of ABS gadgets and flyers, we walked among the students, interacting with them and trying to stimulate their interest in Erasmus programs. These experiences served also as an opportunity to understand how to better manage our team-working skills. In fact, after every presentation, we all discussed the ways we could improve similar events in the future. This is something that I have really appreciated these past few weeks in ABS because working in a solid team gave us also the possibility to record our own self-improvement.
A fundamental part of our stay in Blagoevgrad, which I also consider as an important step for me and my flatmates to become a great team, consisted on the several travels we have made around Bulgaria and abroad. We had the chance to discover every weekend the beauties of this country. I’m really satisfied with our out of town adventures, especially because me and my roommate, Adèle, we succeeded in hitchhiking to Skopje. I confess, I never thought I would have been able to do that because of my obsessive reliance on pre-planning details, especially when I travel.
So far we had such a great time here in Blagoevgrad and in ABS and I am aware that at the end of these two months I will sadly leave this country and all the people I met here. But I still have some achievements to accomplish before that: I want to finish the personal project me and Adèle are working on and I would like to further improve my everyday English vocabulary. Also, I would like to keep traveling and to taste the typical Bulgarian food that I still haven’t tried and, why not, to commit myself to do more sport during my leisure time.
Colin, UK:
After two months living in Bulgaria with the Active Bulgarian Society, what can I say I’ve learned? After several years of studying, lectures, tests, and essays, the switch to non-formal learning was a daunting one. The cynic might say that studying at the school of life is equally rich wherever you are. But I can safely say that these two months of living in, working in and experiencing Bulgaria have been hugely important in my development.
Before coming to Bulgaria, I had two objectives: learn new skills that would help me in the humanitarian sector and see as much of Eastern Europe as possible. In my time in the office, I’ve helped plan local presentations, informal gatherings and stall at job fairs for the organization and for my personal project I managed to peek under the hood and help write an application for an EU grant to hold a youth training seminar. Unfortunately, due to time restraints and the encroaching Easter Holidays, the application could not be accepted by the deadline. However, it is currently ready to be processed for the next application period in Autumn, and I do feel a sense of satisfaction knowing I contributed towards a project that could someday allow charities to better serve their vulnerable young people.
Insofar as my commitment to traveling, I believe I’ve done quite well. My weekends have been filled with jaunts around the country (Varna, Burgas, Plovdiv) and longer trips to Turkey and Greece have given me time to decompress, relax and begin to understand the vast history of these places. Unfortunately, Bulgaria’s just a bit too big, its neighbors just a bit too far away for one solitary weekend, and as much as I would have loved to visit Macedonia, Romania or Albania, the 10-hour coach rides or lack of transport altogether made it difficult. Perhaps these are trips for another time.
At two months I feel I have spent the perfect amount of time in Blagoevgrad. I’ve learned valuable office skills in my professional life and important communication skills in my personal.
Ugo, France:
“All you've got to do is decide to go and the hardest part is over” - Tony Wheeler
This quote is perfect to describe my experience, here in Bulgaria. After being informed I was going to be involved in this placement, it’s all gone very, very fast. Our arrival in Blagoevgrad, getting to know the ABS organization, our firsts steps in the Bulgarian language and culture, expanding our professional skills, the travels within Bulgaria and abroad... I’m sure I’ve forgotten lots of things…
To begin, I would like to speak about Blagoevgrad. It was impossible to pronounce the name correctly before I came here! I did not know much about the city, but what a discovery. It’s not the biggest city, but a beautiful one. Surrounded by hills with snow, a big park and with the main street covered with multi-colored umbrellas, we went from surprise to surprise. It’s a good city to encounter the Bulgarian culture for the first time. The locals are very welcoming people, always trying to help you or just trying to understand you. And Bulgarian life? For a French guy like me, it’s heaven. You can eat, drink or travel for nothing. Just to give an example, you can eat a full meal, with a drink for around 3 euros. Talking about food, they have a few specialties, like banitza, chicken soup, tarator and obviously rakiya (the local alcohol).
Another good thing with Blagoevgrad is it is near to lots of amazing destinations. Thanks to this location, I discovered a few great places in Bulgaria: Plovdiv, the oldest city in Europe; Burgas and Varna, two cities on the black sea coast; The Rila monastery, very near to Blagoevgrad; Veliko Tarnovo, with a huge fortress; and Rupite, known for its hot springs. On top of all these cities are the countries which lie on Bulgaria’s borders. We walked along the beautiful streets of Istanbul, Turkey for 4 days, and hope to soon do the same in Thessaloniki, Greece.
I hear you asking yourself, “so, volunteering is traveling, eating and enjoying the country?”. That’s only part of it. As a volunteer, I have to work for the Active Bulgarian Society. My job here is to promote current EVS projects on social media, create an event each Thursday for the Chat Club and find and make my own personal project. My studies were in the communication and media fields, so I already had skills that were transferable to my work’s objectives. I developed DTP (equal to PAO in French) skills with Illustrator and Premiere and was able to create the poster for each week’s Chat Club event. For my personal project, I wanted to create an interactive video to present life in Blagoevgrad as a volunteer. The “work” hardly ever felt like work, but more like I had the freedom to explore my hobbies and creativity.
Now, I have only 2 weeks left here, and it feels like I've been here for 2 days. Time is moving too fast. We are looking forward to our one trip left to Greece, and I really hope it will perfectly tie up this experience. I hope to complete another personal project about leaving a mark of our time spent here. I would like to create a huge tree in the office with our Polaroid photos on it, to make a genealogic tree of ABS. Because yes, ABS and volunteers are part of the family now.
Thanks to my flatmates Adèle, Luisa, and especially Colin for living, travelling and working so well together; many thanks to the members of ABS Natasha, Oleysa, Simona, Levan, Kiril, Ivan for teaching me how to integrate into Bulgarian culture and for being so incredibly welcoming and kind; thanks to the other volunteers from all the other countries who I now consider my friends, Alexia, Miguel, Cvetli, Nargiz, Gentian, Alvaro, Elvira, Ino, Iraa, Juliette, too many to name… And a special thanks for Borislav a.k.a. Bobby for being my mentor here, without whom I wouldn’t have had the nearly as enjoyable an experience…
