My EVS at CIKK / RADAR

Do you know what is EVS? It’s an international volunteering project in the E.U., suitable for everyone between 18 – 30, so actually it can be you! It seems like an abstract and complex thing if you here about it for the first time, but nothing is less true. There is actually an online database for all the projects around Europe and you can just look trough and find the best project for you: https://europa.eu/youth/evs_database. Then you find a sending organisation in your country (whom are mentioned in the same database) and together with your sending organisation you start to contact and arrange your project abroad. So that’s how I ended up living and volunteering in Budapest at CIKK.

In this weekly blog I will update you about my EVS experience at CIKK as a foreign volunteer and hopefully it will inspire you to jump to another country as well!

Let me introduce myself and my organisation in this first blog. My name is Jitske (first name) Wadman (family name), I am from Holland and last two years I lived in Rotterdam. The kids already learned my name, which was not so easy for them! I chose to do EVS because I like to learn things by doing and I like adventure, to explore new worlds and get to know myself from another angle. So now I will jump in the world of youth work, which I am very curious about.

Well, two weeks ago I went to CIKK for the first time. I met two very warm people who are running the place called Radar. I saw some kids running around, playing games and sitting behind the computer. What a small but warm place, I thought. Immediately I started to think: what will my volunteering look like? And what can I do for these kids? Maybe making some drawings or other creative stuff together? And that’s the best thing at Radar I found out quite soon, the two people in charge are so open and willing to make my EVS the best as possible, so I can really implement my own ideas and feel free. Until now I just visited the place to get to know Radar, my collegues and the children better. The atmossphere is totally open and it seems like everyone can be himselves. The place is in the same building as a school, so for me it’s quite frappant that those kids even go there in their holidays. That means the place is really their second home, which is great!

What I have seen until now is that Radar is succesful in building a community, everyone feels relax and it really feels like an open group of friends amoun all ages. The language barrier is funny for me and so adorable. The kids just start to talk Hungarian to me and it seems like they don’t get that I don’t understand them. But it’s a great thing, because I would be able to learn a little Hungarian as well. And by playing games or doing creative workshops, we communicate by doing that. So it’s a new and interesting way to me to make contact with others. Together with the collegues we have about one year to make my EVS a succesful experience for Radar and for me. And I trust in it that we will do a great job with the three of us. So in this Blog you can read what kind of things I could organize.

Bye the way, I love to learn about Hungarian expressions, a funny one I learned yesterday was “zöld fülü”. And I think: what has the ear to do with it? In Holland we just say “your green”.

Oke, I keep you posted about my experience in Radar.

Tot ziens! (Viszonlátásrá)

Jitske