The first half of my EVS-time

After four months of being an EVS-Volunteer the half of my overall EVS-time is over. So far I have taken part of five PRAXIS-campaigns and I had the opportunity to improve a lot of my skills.

The first campaign I took part was the “Cleaning Lake Kerkini”-Campaign, for which we PRAXIS-Volunteers cleaned – together with some school classes – the big storage lake Kerkini which is placed near to Serres. We also documented the cleaning to present it later in the internet.

There was a Free-Goal-Event at the central Elefterias Square in Serres during the Football Against Racism in Europe (=FARE) Actionweek. While this event was going on, we PRAXIS-Volunteers held an exhibition at the same place to give some information about the subject of racism in football to the people.

Also a big thing was the Eco-Conference which PRAXIS organized and which we PRAXIS-volunteers were helping to organize. But in contrast to the other campaigns we did not had a leading job at the Eco-Conference.

At the beginning of December we took part of the worldwide AIDS-campaign related to the World-Aids-Day. For this campaign and also – later – for the Human-Rights-Campaign we PRAXIS-volunteers held self-made exhibitions at Elefterias Square in Serres, created movies, did radio shows and – of course – created radio spots related to our radio shows.

However, this is not everything I did during these four months.

In opposite to the campaigns we took part of we had also some work to do which was more “every-day-work-like”. This includes updating websites which are owned and hold by PRAXIS or – for example – creating invitations for different events, creating logos and blogging. We also were responsible for the sound-management of the daily held PRAXIS-radio show.

For this reason I improved my personal skills in a lot of fields: I improved my skills related to layouting – e.g. posters, logos, invitations – with Adobe Photoshop or InDesign and related to website-editing with Adobe Dreamweaver. I learned how to do the sound management for a radio show and how to make a radio spot or a radio show with the computer-program Cubase. We also had Greek-language-lessons in which we learned the basics of Greek language. But more than learning Greek I improved my English-language skills during my all-day-life with my flat-lads.

And during working with them, but also with greek volunteers, I learnt more about teamwork and organization and coordinating of campaigns and events.