The Fruits of Our Labour

Visualising Success

Frist Place Winners Photo Exhibition


Seeing the results of your work is a very important part of ones ESC experience. Without tangible results its hard to find the motivation to push on through the difficult times. One of my the most rewarding parts of my ESC was seeing finished products or events related to my work. This helped me grow during my project and my non formal education. 



Opening night Photo Exhibition

Photography Exhibition 

One of my most successful and proudest achievements in the frist six months of being in Ukraine was the planning, running and showing the work of my photography club. The idea was to give members a project to help improve their photography skills. The theme, Vinnytsia by Night was decided upon to improve, night photography skills, handy during Ukraine's long winter, and to help develop ones personal expression as a photography. We asked participants who signed up to send in the following photos: A photo taken at night, Neon light photo, Photo that best describes Vinnytsia to them and a creative selfie. 

Practical Photo Class

We opened up registration in January and planned to hold the exhibition mid March. Meaning during the weeks of February our meetings were dedicated to topics like: eg, night photography. A practical, going with participants to take photos and a photo lab where participants could come with their photos and receive feedback on how to improve their photos before the entre deadline. The final result was that participants could see their own work in the exhibition and let family and friends vote on the best photo's in each submission category.      


Mozaki and Creative Writing
Main Authors of the Creative Writing Book

One of my passions and core skills I wanted to develop during ESC was my writing. As talked about in my previous blog post. The creative writing project and Mozaki were by far two of my most successful projects during my ESC project. Working with like minded people who actively completed task which at times were difficult and time consuming did in the end led to a great collection of short story's, poems and creative writing exercises. To make sure that all this creativity wouldn't be lost. I designed a creative writing guidebook to help future readers begin or inspire  others in writing their own creative writing stories. In total me and my cohort of volenters published three issues of Mozaki, a intercultural magazine. I co author one article and wrote two others myself. I focused main on topics about the cities architecture history and urban planning. The writing of these articles, though challenging and time consuming. Did leave me feeling a great sense of pride when seeing the printed copies of Mozakia.


Language Cafe

Language Clubs and Café

The experience of language clubs for me was sadly my least favourite part of my ESC experience. Due to Covid-19 many people did not attend our clubs and with government locks beginning end January coupled with the bad experience of having the clubs online. led to inconsistent clubs which may have led to low participation effecting our over all succes. Despite this, one positive aspect from this experience was the idea of a language café. With this club we tried to consolidate our low participation of the two to three language clubs we had and combine them into one event. The idea was to divided the evening into two sections. The frist was dedicated to teaching beginners a new language. We were able to offer, English, Dutch, German, Italian and later Turkish. The second half of the evening was than left for free conversation for more experienced speakers of the above languages the opportunity to speak with a native.

Teaching at a local English School

Despite the ups and downs, especial with participant numbers. The frist months in Ukraine differently taught me a lot and I am glad for this experience. Though our original reason for hosting language clubs didn't go as planned, this did allow us to have a greater impact for our NGO's writing projects which during the time of remote workings was a great advantage and gave us the ability to carry on with our ESC despite all the uncertainty of lockdowns.

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