Zornitsa Vasileva and Sandra Docheva who were participants in the YE "Make social inclussion happen", which took place in Costinesti, Romania are sharing with us their volunteer experience. You can read about the different organisations they are part of, what do they do and why is it so important to be a volunteer.
Being a volunteer requires taking a lot of responsibility, but it also comes with the joy of helping and working in a team. That’s the way I’m going to describe my participation as a Vice Chairman in the Youth Council of Drug Prevention in Vidin - joy and a responsibility.
I started as a member of the club one year ago. There was a big event called “To clean Bulgaria in a day”. I had the desire to find a group of people and join them in the big cleaning. My friend introduced me to the people of the Youth Council who warmly welcomed me in their group. After this day spent with them I realized that I wanted to become a part of their team of volunteers.
So basically, what we do there is creating different events or supporting already existing ones with the aim of informing the youth of what drugs, cigarettes and alcohol do to their body and to prevent them from becoming addicted.
We can inform them in different ways depending on their age. Most of the time it happens with lessons in school. We have the chance to visit every school and class in the town twice in the school year and give the students lectures. The bigger students get lectures about different types of drugs and why not to take them and also sex education on why it is crucial to use protection and what are the consequences. The little children are thought about not to trust people they don’t know, how to be tolerant to each other and etc. We use different games and activities, so we keep everyone’s attention.
Just because we are mostly talking about drug prevention, that doesn’t mean we only deal with that. We also organize variety of events like cleaning areas, planting trees, playing with little children, helping people in need and many others.
In general, working with so many different people and having the ability to participate in such events is a possibility I’m glad I possess.
by Zornitsa Vasileva
The Bulgarian Red CrossYouth (BRCY) is a voluntary youth organization. Through the work of its volunteers and its training programs, various activities and services, it advances humanitarian values among children and teenagers.
I applied for a membership in this organization two years ago - in 2017 because I wanted to do good for the community and become more socially active and to be honest most of my friends were members.
My first impression wasn’t one of the best though. At the first meeting, no one introduced themselves and they didn’t even notice that there was a new volunteer. I don’t know how well I would’ve done if my friends weren’t there to guide me. With time, things got better. There were a lot of organized events in my school on holidays in which volunteers made their own cards, ornaments or jewelry and we sold them. The money was always donated to different people in need.
On 14th February this year, we had another charity event and we decided to spice things up by making anonymous valentines. Everyone could come and write a sweet message on paper, put the name of the person it was for in the back and then put the note in our secret box. Our classmates really loved it and at the end of class we went to the class rooms and gave out all the valentines. It was great to see the happiness on people’s faces when they received theirs. From now on, we intend to do it every year.
I look forward to gaining more experience and participating in many more charity events organized by the BRCY.
by Sandra Docheva
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