The adaptation kit

The adaptation kit in a foreign country implies, first of all, trust in yourself and others and the willingness to understand why. Volunteering often seems like a show poster title on which you want your name to appear.

But in Vishenky Center the children are real! They listen to Skillet, play football, adore pudding and remove tomatoes from the soup or soleanca. Between two sessions of physiotherapy and psychological counseling, they learn to play the notes from Nirvana songs on the guitar and, after a while, they begin to translate for you Priviet! into Hello! English lessons with them cannot be formal. Definitely not!

At the end of the week, in a separate house set up, as part of a pilot project, three teenagers (M, M and M) are taught to take care of themselves in their daily lives. The program regards a lot of practical things: to manage their own money, to sew, hygiene items etc., but also what it means to live together.

Devochki also learned a lot: to play Memo, to dance at morning exercises, to sew, to make textile paintings, but no matter how responsible you try to become, it is comforting to know that someone is watching over you. With inexhaustible enthusiasm and natural humor, Marina M., responsible for volunteers in the Vishenky Center, is always there. In her vocabulary there is no 'it's not possible!'!!!

Because of this, after two months of EVS in Smolensk, being a volunteer is not an inflexible project, a business, but an attitude with utility. You volunteer because you are needed and you feel useful!

Denisa