An inevitable part of EVS - saying goodbye.

As I promised before - a post about my thoughts.

Yesterday was definetly a "Goodbye day". We had a meeting with the Regional Minister , who wanted to present us a gift and thank us for the voluntary work we do here (although she could make it than the event was really nice). Almost all the volunteers were there (with the exeption of Rebekka) and it was really nice but it was also the last night for me to see 4 of the volunteers for the last time as their projects had finished and they would be going home in next days ( or for a while at least as I hope to see some of them still sometime in the future).

And in general it is a "Goodbye weekend" as my On-Arrival Penguin group (group of volunteers you come to Austria at similar time period and have on-arrival and mid-term training together) is also having their goodbyes ... a lot of them finishin and also returning to home.

I did Erasmus in 2009-10 so I have the experience of both and I have to say that for me they are not the same experience. I did make a lot of friends during my Erasmus time but with EVS I gained 2 families : my Estonian-Belgian-German-Graz family and my Penguin-Austria family. If Erasmus was mostly about having fun and studing/working than EVS is about learning, taking care of each other and sharing. Thats why I would describe it as a family - as I feel being taken care, being taken without any judgment and I felt safe. And of course we also had a lot of fun :)

I think I was really lucky to have this 2 EVS families and make this connection with this people. I feel special by just being part of this groups and I will never forget them or the times we shared together. Parts of my family still stay here for me so I cannot say that it is all behind me. And parts of my families I will see soon again.

I hope the other volunteers who come after me will also find something so special from this experience and will have this support network around them.

And there is this 2 things I learned from my Belgian friend: " Don´t tell "Goodbye" , tell "See you" and "We are still together: we will only leave each other when we will stop thinking about each other" .

So people we think of will always be right next to us and they will only leave when you stop thinking of them.

So see you soon :)

Women and men in third sector

I was searching today statistics about NGO and women´s % in the third sector and found this paper about situation in Poland 1 year ago. 

I think the charts talk for themselves. 

Figure 1: Third-sector management by gender, 2010–2011

Figure 2: Third-sector employment by gender, 2010–2011

More information HERE

Frauen-Flashmob gegen "Po-Grapschen" 26th november 2012

Another demonstration we took part in :)

I think I have never participated in so many public demonstrations ..or even heard so many to take place. This is definetly not common in Estonia and is somethin people just don´t do- not protesting is part of estonian culture as protesting is for french for people.

This demonstration was against sexual harrasment as there was a court case in Austria when a woman accused a man in sexual harrasment ( man touched her ass at a public place without her consent) and this was not announcsed as a sexual harrasment .

Protest got a lot of public attentions and pictures were up in Kleine Zeitung (newspaper) and on Austrian news also . Here are also some pictures .

Article of the insident in German : LINK
Article about the protest  in German: LINK
TV reports : LINK1 and LINK2
Photos at Kleine Zeitung : LINK

Meeting local organisations in Graz, Austria

Last 2 months have been really rich in this field as I have had in total 5 different meetings/events and loved everyone of the. I will give a short overview where I have been and what I have been up to :)

1. Wiki Grünanger Opening Festival 19.10

Definetly one of my favourite events in that month. This made me alive. Chaos , young people , communicating. Oh, that is living I tell you ...
I was there as a volunteer, helping Marina (youth worker there). So I was responsible to set things up and most of the times were making different coctails for youth and speaking with them .. in GERMAN.
"Sehr toll" (Very cool/fun) I would say about that :).Weather was perfect, I loved working together with Marina and youngsters were also very open to speak to me and ignore my bad German.

More information about Wiki Grünanger : http://www.wiki.at/wiki_494_Youth%20Point%20%22%20Jugendtreff%20Gr%C3%BCnanger%22

2. Meeting with Graz Youth Centers 25.10

This is something that happens just once in month and we really didn´t know what to expect so we just went there and see from the spot how it will go. I was so happy that we at least new the staff of the Girls Center and Wiki Grünanger we knew Marina. So there were about 35 people from youth field there. Everybody did their introduction (others in German and we in English). One participant was also from City Graz Department of Open Children and Youth Work. I loved the atmosphere there . Reminded me a lot of Estonian Youth workers meetings and suddenly I missed that feeling a lot. Meeting people from the same field and knowing these people already, talking with them and just having some laughs. Oeh , jes - I do miss doing practical Youth Work quite quite much. I cannot be all that I am when I cant work as a youth worker.

3. International evening in Girls Center Mafalda "Jam" 8.11

Me and Alina went there to cook international food with the girls and also just talk with the staff and youngsters and get to know them. For my surprise most of the girls spoke English. Many of them are not originally from Austria, but all of them could speak German. Alina was fortunate enough to find some girls who spoke Romanian - no estonian speakers for me unfortunatly :) The evening was really nice- food came out good and also girls where curious and openminded. So fun times :)

Moorapallid (Estonian)

Meat-Vegetable Salat (Romania)

 More information about Girls Center "Jam" : http://www.mafalda.at/jam/

4. Participating in LifeLong Learning information seminar 19.11

We went to a information seminar where they introduced LifeLong Learning programm and other possibilities- we were mostly interested in Grundvig learning partnership as we want to develop a project in that area. I have to say it was quite a challenge as it was in German and not with a easy vocabulary , so I have to admit I understood only 20 % of it. Fortunatly one part of it was also individual councelling and there we could speak English and communivate with the national agency coordinators directly.

More information about the Program: http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/llp/about_llp/about_llp_en.php

5. Visiting Womens Healt Center "Frauengesuntheitszentrum" 20.11

We met Mag.^a Veronika Graber , whose topics in center are Girls Healt in Styria and eating disorders, body norms and beauty ideals. We did a short presentation of our activities and EVS and she intriduced her work and the center. We also discussed future cooperation possibilities.

More information about them : http://www.fgz.co.at