EVS IN BRITTANY FRANCE

 

 

To talk about all that I’ve done here in France over the last 7 months I feel could easily fill a book and so how to write and explain about my EVS experience in only a few paragraphs seems almost an impossible task! So I’ll try as best as I can.

I am a student of Human Geography and French at Sheffield Hallam University in England after graduating I am hoping to get into a job in the humanitarian sector within an NGO. I decided to try and find an EVS placement for my placement during my 3rd year. I was really keen on learning and progressing my level of French and so I only searched and applied for placements within French speaking countries. I got lucky and was offered a placement for 10 months (September to July) in Brittany in France!! 

The town I live in is called Redon, it’s a town of 10,000 inhabitants so after living in Sheffield for the last 2 years it can be on the quiet side sometimes! However there is another 8 volunteers here in the same town (from Spain, Italy, Germany and Greece) working within different organisations (a boat museum, a school for children with disabilities, a youth centre, a cinema, a Lycee (equivalent to a 6th form college in the uk)) and we all live together in the same apartment complex within 3 separate apartments (3 volunteers per apartment) we share the kitchen and the bathroom and then each have a separate bedroom and so there is always another person around and every evening after work is spent eating together, drinking tea, chatting or going to the cinema or pub.

I work in a college 5 minutes’ walk away from my house as an assistant teacher for the class of ULIS a class for students who have disabilities, I help them write notes in class. I also do one on one lessons with the students to revise their different subjects or to teach them English. I have also run a photo workshop as my personal project and have gone out with the students to take photos in the local area. We will be holding an exhibition  of the student’s photos in June.

The group of volunteers (above) / The class of ULIS (under)

Every week I have a 3 hour French lesson with the other volunteers, also as a group we have spent every Thursday afternoon from November to March planning and organising a weekend of events for The Weekend of Europe the events included a treasure hunt, a film evening on the topic of immigration in Europe, a dance class, a walk, a graffiti event and a concert. This was a lot of hard work but very rewarding and I learnt many new skills such as being responsible for designing the poster and pamphlet, this I’d never done before. Other than work I have had amazing opportunities offered to me by my Hosting organisation including all the volunteers going to a film festival of short films, never have I watched so many films in so little time in my life! Afterwards as a group we had to choose our favourites or the ones we found most interesting and later in the year the local cinema held a short film evening with the films that we had chosen.

Another opportunity was to go skiing for the first time in my life!! This was arranged as a personal project of one of the other volunteers here in my town. However after I crashed right into a little kid and knocked him to the ground, and also that I was too scared to even move once we reached the summit not to even mention the cable car up there I think ice skating is scary enough for me from now on!

Being with other young people from all over Europe and working everyday with people of a different nationality has really opened up my knowledge of these different countries, their customs and ‘norms’ and we have had many opportunities to share our differences and cultures.

Every week I have a 3 hour French lesson with the other volunteers, also as a group we have spent every Thursday afternoon from November to March planning and organising a weekend of events for The Weekend of Europe the events included a treasure hunt, a film evening on the topic of immigration in Europe, a dance class, a walk, a graffiti event and a concert. This was a lot of hard work but very rewarding and I learnt many new skills such as being responsible for designing the poster and pamphlet, this I’d never done before. One such example is that each volunteer has to hold an evening in our hosting organisation to introduce their country with games, music and food etc. these have always been passed with a lot of laughter! Other times we’ve celebrated the Spanish carnival or Halloween at which we played games such as apple ducking that the other volunteers had never played before! Also I introduced Marmite to the students at work when they held a British breakfast event.

We have also had lots of opportunities to find out about the culture of Brittany by going to the ‘Fez Noz’ (night parties) which are music events of traditional Breton music and dancing! We have also eaten lots of Galettes (savoury pancakes local to here), visited other local towns and we also have had a wine tasting session in our French class!

  Fez Noz in Redon (down) / Rennes at 

Christmas (up)

 Biggest challenge here is having to go shopping by Bike! Trying to fit everything into a bag is almost a magic trick and the French baguette is really not designed very well for transporting!

I have had the great opportunity to participate in other different volunteering schemes before my EVS including the British government International Citizen Service scheme but nothing that I have done before has topped my year here in France!

My work has been brilliant, there have been moments of course with frustration of the language, at the beginning especially, but despite this my tutor has always been very supportive and kind and the moment that you start to be able to communicate with your students and they can understand what you are asking of them or you can start to follow what the teachers saying in the lesson are such rewarding moments that it’s worth every minute of frustration and it really creeps up on you without realising! I’m going to miss the students I’ve worked with and my colleagues so much, I don’t want to think about having to leave yet! My home life also has been made awesome by living with my flat mates who have become like my special ‘French’ family. Pretty much every second of the time that I’ve not been at work has been spent in their company and I’m not exaggerating! For some who need more personal space this could be too much but for me I hate spending too much time on my own so it’s perfect! Most of us come home for the lunch break as we all live very close to our jobs and so we eat lunch and dinner together and so these shared meals will be a really warm memory that will stay with me forever, not to mention all the different cakes that are made too from all the different countries! Many of our challenges we have faced whilst being here have been shared or even the same including for example the more difficult struggles and frustrations of learning a language and living in a different culture and country, getting through this together and arriving also at the moment when you can finally have a good conversation and understand everything that the other says is very special. I have definitely made friends for life :)

 

What is there to lose? All I can say is if you’re still lucky enough to be younger than 30 apply already! I really can’t believe you will regret it, all I can say is that I know I hit lucky with my place and project and sometimes others haven’t been so lucky so just make sure you do your research very very well and know exactly what you want from your project even the small things like the size of town, accommodation, sleeping arrangements, pocket money, hours of work etc. don’t be afraid to ask everything and anything you want to know, being certain that the project is for you will let you make the most of your experience and have the best time that you can have :). Good luck!

Hosting organisation on Facebook: La Mapar
Volunteer page on Facebook: Red_onBouge

Teaching English in Ukraine - 2013

Together we are many

by

Barney Smith

International Volunteer Project, Ukraine 2012

It was another sweltering evening at Boiko children’s summer camp, the site of my seventeenth international volunteer project. The volunteers had gathered together with some teenagers from the camp. We were all asked to say something in Ukrainian. When it was my turn, “Together we are many” was the first phrase which came to mind. A line from a song which Ukraine’s revolutionaries would sing on Kiev’s Independence Square in late 2004, it had stuck in my mind. These four words summed up for me the spirit of solidarity and cooperation so important in international volunteer projects.

There were four other volunteers: Karoliina from Finland, Laura from Spain, Nina from Slovenia and Sonya from the Czech Republic. Our group was ably managed by Ukrainian leader Katya. Our work consisted of assisting the teachers in their English lessons in the morning and jointly organising an English club in the late afternoon. Depending on the teacher and group, the lessons tended to be more academic and the club focused more on games. We gave PowerPoint presentations about our country in the lessons and also, one evening, to the other volunteers. As native speakers of five different languages, we made the most of the linguistic opportunities which presented themselves and did our best to brush up our knowledge of each other’s languages.

The volunteers on Kharkov’s Freedom Square

During our two weeks at Boiko we participated fully in the life of the camp. There were sporting activities organised for the whole camp including football between the teenagers in one team and the staff and volunteers in the other. Most evenings there were stage performances given by the children involving drama, music and dance. One evening the six of us judged the talent show. The quality of the performances and the hard work and dedication on display were deeply humbling and moving. I was reminded of these performances weeks later when I was back in the UK listening to a radio broadcast about the Olympics. When the discussion turned to the countries which had performed better than their population size or national wealth would suggest likely, it came as no surprise to me that Ukraine was among them. 

The volunteers take to the stage at Boiko summer camp

 Our free time was also memorable. The camp was situated on spacious grounds next to a small lake and so there were ample opportunities to keep fit, including by swimming and running. Most days, usually after the English club, we went to the shop and to the restaurant just outside the gates of the camp where we would set up our “office”, as we called it. There we benefitted from the wi-fi connection both for doing lesson and club preparation and keeping in touch with friends and family. The staff certainly relished our regular custom; we used to joke that the more we ordered the better the service and faster the internet connection! We also had two memorable trips to Kharkov, where Katya and her father showed us around Ukraine’s second largest city. We enjoyed lunch at a traditional Ukrainian restaurant evocatively named Hut of the Pot Belly on the first trip and, by contrast, picnicked in a city park on the second.

During the project I often had a sense of déjà-vu, when I thought back to the projects in which I had participated in Russian summer camps years earlier. The language spoken at Boiko was that of Ukraine’s larger neighbour, so the terminology used, much of it relating to the army, was familiar: children’s groups were called “detachments” and lights out in the evening was known as “retreat”. Yet there were also differences: some of the children I met in Siberia in the late 1990s had never met a foreigner and used to marvel at my (very modest!) digital watch and film camera, while at Boiko some of the children had already travelled extensively abroad and were completely at ease with modern technology. 

After the project, the volunteers took the opportunity to see more of Ukraine. For my part, I spent a week travelling west across the country before entering Poland. The linguistic divide between the east and west of Ukraine and, below the surface, the political divide, were stark. As I approached the Polish border I found Russian less and less widely spoken. In the west of the country I also saw many posters denouncing the imprisonment of former Prime Minister and heroine of the Orange Revolution, Yulia Timoshenko. Until these linguistic and political issues are resolved, Ukraine will surely continue to be seen by many as a somewhat troubled country, yet one with great potential, hospitable people and astonishing natural beauty.

As I begin my eighth year teaching in Kuwait, an oasis of calm in a region itself rocked by revolution, I often think back to my international volunteer project near Ukraine’s eastern border. I think of the people with whom I volunteered and worked. I think of how together we were many.

 

Group leader Katya with Ukrainian children at English club