Time flies so fast and one third of my EVS has already past. Feels like the on-arrival training was just couple of weeks ago, but in the beginning of January it was already time to attend a mid-term meeting. Trainers particularly stressed that it was a “meeting” and not a “training”. Which means that we had more space for self-reflections and evaluations, workshops carried out by volunteers and more time for relaxed small conversations with each other. It’s interesting that it is possible to realize your own feelings through a simple chat with people who are currently in the same situation. So, methods, used in this meeting were a great example of non formal learning process for me.

My expectations of this meeting were to get an inspiration for mini-projects, share gained experience, try to find solutions for possible problems we faced and finally find out: “Is there life after EVS?” And yes, there is:)

During the three days in Sloup - a small village where we had our mid-term meeting - we got some examples of mini-projects by previous volunteers and brainstormed to collect some ideas for ours, attended a workshop about project management and non-violent communication, heard stories from former volunteers, learned about possible after-EVS activities from Erasmus+ programme and so on, and so on.

What else can 20 young people from different countries do together? Well, have fun, obviously. We had a small hike in the neighbourhood, caved to Sloupsko-Sosuvske Caves, played bowling and tried to sing Czech songs. As a culmination of the meeting and in order to dive more into Czech traditions we had an exciting “fancy ball”. Dressed up and a bit clumsy, we managed to learn line dance, cha-cha-cha and others to fill the spirit of famous balls.

Traditionally, we exchanged small letters with best wishes and words of gratitude and left Sloup tired but inspired to make the rest of our EVS as best as possible.   

Diana