PEOPLE+ | Hobbies are the soul of a person

Neda Radoilova and Teodora Tsanova who were our participants in the passed YE "Make social inclussion happen" in Costinesti, Romania are sharing with us what they like to do in their free tim and why those specific activities and hobbies are their favorite things to do.

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"I like to think of myself as a bright, creative person however I am a bit introverted and that’s why I don’t have that much experience in being part of social clubs and doing charity.

I have taken part in organizing a few charity bazaars, supporting different causes, in my school. It was very fun crafting things and bringing baked goods and sharing them with classmates in order to help the people in need.

My most recent volunteering work is the youth program I joined this year, called „Interact“. It is part of Rotary International club and its main goals are to help the community to develop and also to help the young participants become the future leaders of Rotary club. The biggest activity that we did since I joined the program is a charity concert in aid of the stray animals, mainly dogs, which we see every day on our streets. The name of the concert was “A small home for big hearts” and the price of the entrance was 2.00 leva and at least one plastic bottle cap. It was very successful, we raised a lot of money and the people liked it very much.

We used half of the money to buy food for the local shelter we have and the other half we gave to the owners to buy vaccines and medicine. As for the bottle caps they are donated in help of the hospitals which need to buy special nurseries for premature babies.

The other hobbies which I have are related to art. For example, I like drawing and I have been drawing since primary school which was an art school, but I went to high school and stopped drawing for a while. However, I am taking drawing lessons currently led by one of the teachers I had in the art school. Also, I would love to have a career in art.

Another hobby I used to have is playing the piano. I took interest in it when I was maybe seven years old as I was seeing my bigger brother playing every day on the piano we have at home. Despite playing the piano on every school concert we had and doing a few competitions, I lost interest in it and stopped playing. I hope I would start again someday.

I like singing as well but I am only comfortable singing at home and only in front of my friends. I would love to start taking singing lessons too and maybe someday be ready to set my fears aside and go on stage."

By Neda Radoilova

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"The hobbies for me are very important and special. You will ask why? Because the hobbies are the soul of the person.

Photography is one of my hobbies. Using the photos, I can show what I like and what is inside me. When I go out with friends or with my family, my camera is always with me. People know me as “young photographer”. When I see something beautiful, I imagine it how it will look like in a photo. Before few months I’ve participated in one exhibition. In this exhibition there were pictures and I was the only one participating with photos. I had to explain the story of every photo and people liked them a lot. Photography is just my passion.

Another hobby which I have, is reading books. My mom reads very much, and I am just like her. I read a lot of books, but I don’t have favorite one, neither favorite genre. The genre which I don’t like so much is the fantasy. I’ve read a few fantasy books, but for sure this is not my genre. I love to read books connected with love or books for teenagers. I have a huge interest about this genre. When I read the book, I feel like I am in my own world. My mom read more different genres.

One year ago I was part of the Bulgarian Young Red Cross. It was very interesting experience. The work wasn’t easy but it was interesting and also taught me how to work with younger than me people. There I found a lot of friends and I hope that our friendship will last forever. When I talk with someone from them, I feel like I can share everything with them. This is very special and important for me and for our friendship."

by Teodora Tsanova

PEOPLE+ | Photography: from a hobby to a career

Ever since I turned 8 years old, I have been carrying a camera with me on every trip I took. At first, I learnt from my father, who has always been enthusiastic about photography. After many years of using a simple point-and-shoot camera and of struggling with the basics of working with light, colours and shapes, I finally switched to a higher-class camera and started developing a deeper understanding. This is how an initially occasional hobby grew into an insatiable passion for both photography and cinema.

My interest in cinema was born at a later stage, when I was about 14 years old and had just picked up the habit of watching 5-6 films peer week, sometimes even more. The innumerable films I watched immensely improved my film literacy, which was a significant advantage for my first encounters with the seemingly inexplicable magic behind set that gives video and audio life and meaning. In 2018 I stayed at a German film camp near Berlin for two weeks, during which I worked together with other young people on two short films. One of them was directed, and the other one - filmed by me. It was a great experience which convinced me to devote myself to cinema and revealed the secret behind the magic - a combination of creativity, solid organization and teamwork.

Later that year I participated in the Zurich Film Festival 72 with a short film I directed, filmed and edited in three days. Then in 2019 I took part in an arts festival in Vidin, Bulgaria, called "The Bridge", where I shot two more Short Films. Now I will fully concentrate on my passion, as I will start a bachelor’s degree Of Cinema and Audio-visual Production At The University of Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3.

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by Teodor Todorov

Participant in

Study visit "See the reality" in Diyarbakir, Turkey

USE+FUL | Parkour and Freerunning

So, what really is Parkour and Freerunning?

Are they the same thing?

So, you might have herd of it, and in case you don’t remember, for sure you’ve seen people jumping over roofs, climbing tall walls, doing flips and spins in any way you could imagine. Or maybe not, anyway both are sports practiced literally almost everywhere! And though they look the very same way, they are not exactly the same thing. But to explain why, first you have to know a bit of their History.

History of Parkour and Freerunning.

Well Freerunning comes from Parkour, despite the rumors that its roots are in gymnastics. But where does parkour comes from, actually its starts over a century ago in France. It was developed by French naval officer Georges Hébert, who before the First World War promoted athletic skill based on the models of indigenous tribes he had met in Africa. He noted, "their bodies were splendid, flexible, nimble, skillful, enduring, and resistant but, yet they had no other tutor in gymnastics but their lives in nature." Then inspired by that, he starts training the French military during the First and Second World wars. And  Inspired by Hébert, a Swiss architect developed a "parcours du combattant" (military obstacle course) the first of the courses that are now standard in military training and which led to the development of civilian fitness trails and confidence courses. Years after that, Reymond Belle used "parcours du combattant" and created many courses of his own. His son David Belle is believed to be the father of Parkour. As he was the first to call it parkour. He changed it a lot, creating parkour as it is now. Later, created the group Yamakashi. David Belle and one person of his group Sébastien Foucan had different visions of Parkour development, so Sébastien Foucan founded the Freeruning.

Parkour.

A practitioner of parkour is called a traceur and they aim to get from one point to another in a complex environment, without assistive equipment and in the fastest and most efficient way possible. Parkour includes running, freerunning, climbing, swinging, vaulting, jumping, plyometrics, rolling, crawling and other movements as deemed most suitable for the situation. It is the art of movement.

Freerunning.

Freerunning is a way of expression by interacting with various obstacles and environment. The central principle of freerunning is to express yourself by moving fluidly in one's environment; there are no limitations on the form of this movement. And most of the movements are usually adopted from other sports, such as gymnastics, tricking or breakdancing. Freerunners can create their own moves, flows and lines in different landscapes. It is all about becoming creative in an objective environment.

Something More…

Still they are something more than that, more than a sport, it is art. It is about seeing the world in a different way. Where people see obstacles, you see opportunities, it is self-control, self-knowing, you believe in yourself in order to trust yourself to deeply know and feel your body and mind. And when you run it is close to be meditating because then there is only you flowing through everything.

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by Atanas Bedrev

Participant in

YE "Make social inclussion happen" in Costinesti, Romania