Georgia, the country of surprises

Georgia, the country of surprises

Training course (TC) Volunteering – as a guarantee of future leadership took place in Rustavi, Georgia, from 8th to 15th November 2014. Rustavi is a city situated on a southeast of Georgia, not far from capital of the country, Tbilisi. Thirty youngsters from all of the Europe – Slovakia, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Czech Republic, Italy, Lithuania, Croatia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Georgia- has attended to this course rich in diversity of languages and cultures. I lived with two Turkish and two Azerbaijan guys. Awesome mates…

Why is Georgia a land of surprises? It has begun right after arrival. First time at the airport I experienced a man with a name on a paper waiting for me. Taxi. I sat on a left side. I thought they drive like English. A long time I wondered we were going wrong way on a highway, I was confused by side-parked cars, we were passing cars from the left, same from the right, road wide enough. I sat on a left, didn’t have a steering wheel, breaks, just panic. Traffic light were functioning, but as I was acknowledged later, drivers do care about just the ones with the cameras. Fortunately, I arrived to Rustavi. After some time I got used to the chauffer. I am lying, didn’t get used to, still everything has been surprising me. A little bit more about the traffic. Roads damaged, but I don’t understand as I live in Slovakia, roads great and under construction. Truck comes from the construction on a road at the midnight, lightened like a ghost. Imagine you are a walker…you will learn how to survive.

All right, the reason why we were there. Training. First day breaking ice, getting know, team bulding. Day two. We were talking about volunteering in our homelands and how we are looking for volunteers. We realized that the volunteering is different in every single country. In on land it is a natural part of society, in other less. We were also considering about different views and forms of volunteering. For instance a blood donation, restauration of the castles and work with homeless. At the evening we were promoting organization we are working at.

That was the beginning, then lectures, workshops, games related to volunteering, management and best practices. We got to the capitol where we were working on a many exercises. I was also on a Roller Coster for the first time in my life. Apart from the educating during the day, we had a rich program at the evening, for instance intercultural nights, when every country promoted its traditions and typical cuisine.

All the project run in English we developed. Erasmus + shown us how to learn from each other, how to enrich every single around me. I think that everyone who wanted was acknowledged by many useful things we can use in life on a daily basis. For example, I used my poster that I painted by a marker, remade it and made another one, and also with the band “Vlk ktory nikdy nespi” we are going to create community system of shared bicycles and to begin a donation of a second handed old bicycles.

I have to thank for this training course and I think it moved me far forward, so everything I learnt I will try to use in my work life.

Dominik Jakub, participant of training course