The forthcoming of Spring

 A New Team A New Direction 

Team Field Trip to Ukraine Village

In April our team expanded with the arrival of three new Volunteers. This changed lead to new opportunities but also struggles as our new team faced uncertainties with lockdowns announced right in the middle of our spring planning.

Planning and Evaluating our Situation 

The end of March saw the success of our language café and frist photo exhibition. Our team wanted to build on this success with the launching of a Italian cinema club and closer co cooperation with Vinnytsia's universities which meant our language café and other clubs began to have new and younger  life. This with the arrival of three new volunteers meant that everyone was very excited for the coming month. Upon the arrive of the new volunteers our team began planning for Stina, the eco centre development project, where two of the volunteers would be perimetry based. 

Team Meeting With the New Batch of Interns

I began planning the next photography exhibition, digital story telling and began designing it with my co partners. Energy also came from our personal projects. Mine was at the time interviewing city architects for mozika, another volunteer Matteo, was busy setting up connection for his red bench project, aimed to help raise awareness for domestic violence against women and the third volunteer Anna, was in the middle of organising a clothes swap to raze awareness about fashion waste and secretly a way to find a new summer out fit. It seemed as the worst was behind and spring would lead to a new set of tangible results.

Dutch Club

The Beginning of Something Big

This is story for all the future ESC volenters who wish to do something more than just show up, lead a club, make a movie and write a article about something they are interested in. If you have the ambition and more important pre skills from university or job. Than one can use your ESC time to do a more professional project that befits you and your CV. For me this was my project, Uncovering Vinnytsia Architectural Heritage. The aim was to create a sources book of all the transcripts from interviews I conducted concerning topics related to the cities architectural heritage. What started with interviewing a local tour guide and architect who came to our language clubs, led to a small research team interviewing local historians, Universities professors, Local city workers and the head archivists of the state archives. The result will hopefully be published through the European Council. 

Team's Trip to film Ukrainian Spring Songs 

From all these interviews I also manged to write  a academic article/research report and together with one of the professor's I interviewed, started drafting for the possibility of publication. Though this work was time consuming and stressful at times. Not to mention the amount of work you did compared to your fellow volunteers who were not as involved made finding the energy to keep going difficult at time as you knew this extra was self inflicted. However, when the interviews finished and the article done, the new skills I learned and old ones I had put into practices made this my most valuable learning experiences and also a great project to put onto my CV demonstrating my; research, project management and analytical skills need for finding jobs in research.    

Language Café Picnic

When it Doesn't All Go to Plan

When reading the above one might think spring was a positive period. Sadly this not the case as in april the government announced new lockdown measures and our clubs were cancelled once again. though we try to get creative and find solutions, picnic in the park, using new venues. The people simply did not come to our events. Initially the government planned this lockdown until end June. Throwing all our future planning out the window and casing a lot stress within the team about what to do and also how to prevent boredom. personally, if I hadn't of had my big research project, this would have been the time I would have just wanted to go back home. Despite this time, we were able to make the most of it and the government, did open the country earlier in June, but by than all our Language, Cinema and Photography Clubs were over and eventually cancelled due to lack of attendance. Which did befit the Stina, project as the Vinnytsia volunteers had time to go help out in rural development both in Stina and by visiting surrounding rural schools.

Presentation to Promote ESC

To concluded: Sometimes plans change and what you hoped for doesn't come true. However, this doesn't mean the world will end even though it feels like it. Despite my personal disappointment in my photography club being cancelled and all the work done with no end result. These months still proved fruitful in unexpected ways which I could never have planned for before arrive in Ukraine.