EVS 101: PROS AND CONS

... or rather CONS AND PROS, as I present them in this order.

Hello, good morning, and a great day to you!

It's raining in Palermo for a few days now, so it's the perfect time to blog a bit and come back to one of my favourite topics - European Voluntary Service. I suggest you check out also my blog posts about what is EVS and about the saddest part of this experience - goodbye parties.

* And if you are in any way interested in keeping the EVS programme alive, please sign this online petition to European Parliament - https://goo.gl/42pb6m. We cannot lose this amazing opportunity that is changing lives of so many people!

And today's post and video are dedicated to pros and cons of doing an EVS, or rather - things that can make or break your volunteering experience.

So, if you are really interested in doing an EVS, I want to present you a few of the things you really need to consider before you even start looking for a project. That's why I'm going to start with cons:

#45daysofblogging 34: goodbye parties

Day 34 - September 20

This will not be a real post, like, for example, my travel tips posts. But I really want to tell you about one of the most heartbreaking traditions that became a part of my life - a goodbye party.

You should know something about it, if you every were an international volunteer, a foreign exchange student, did a civil service or any type of an Erasmus+ project (including youth exchanges and training courses. 

I remember that we started thinking about leaving after our project the moment we started it. One of my fellow volunteers said: "I know I will cry so hard after these 9 months!". Little did we know, the crying hard part started in a few weeks...

What is EVS?

As I mentioned in a few of my previous posts, the first time I came to Sicily for a volunteering project. Actually, it was a complete accident, but yeah, some people call it coincidence, I call it fate.

After returning to Kyiv from Thailand, I was very happy to be back home. Well, I was very happy for about a month. After that, when all the emotions faded, all the Thai presents were gifted, all the delicious food and all the Cambodian coffee was finished the reality kicked in (even though I still have dreams about that coffee…)

I realised that I’m back to where I started from - in my room, just that now it was decorated with lovely Thai lights. And somewhere there, far-far away, the world continues to be interesting and full of adventures. Just that someone else was living it, not me.

Don’t get me wrong, it was my decision to leave Thailand and go back home. It was a great experience, but for various reasons, at this point of my life, I can’t see myself moving to Chiang Mai permanently. But the desire for adventures was already fully awakened and wanted to dance.

So I started researching volunteering opportunities – my newly grown sense of self was telling me that I shouldn’t even be bothered with searching for a job as I will not be happy in a corporate environment anymore.