EVS experiences in Hungary

 

The project was based in a small village in the South of Hungary, 12 km from the border with Croatia. With 4 other volunteers from Spain, Portugal and Romania, we worked on several community development, sustainability and environmental projects including a large youth exchange about cycling with 66 young people from 12 different European countries involved.

 

 I held free English lessons on a weekly basis, and also organised cultural evenings for the local people to try food and learn about British/Indian culture. We also held frequent cycling trips around the area and longer ones to Croatia to promote cycling as a great mode of transport, even in the winter! This was definitely my favourite part of the EVS, cycling in a rural area is a breath of fresh air when compared to navigating the concrete mess of London. We had a huge amount of freedom in exploring the local area by bike and meeting people, and it was a great way to gain an insight into Hungarian culture as a lot of people in the area also used bikes. We were also required to participate in Hungarian lessons and I am proud to be able to hold a basic conversation in Hungarian (one of the hardest languages to learn!), and we also learn traditional Hungarian dance lessons. 

Working in the local nursery was very challenging due to the language barrier, but it was a lot of fun and once again, an insight into Hungarian life. We also ran projects in high schools to do with sustainability and development and it was an excellent chance to practice our Hungarian. Over the first few months, we learnt about analog photography and used our acquired skills to take and develop photos, as well as holding exhibitions for local people. We were able to use this later during the youth exchange where one activity involved bike-related analog photography. In terms of accommodation, for the first four months, we all lived in a house in the village with a big garden. We had to chop wood to heat the house by furnace, which felt like a true rural living experience to me. Over the spring/summer months we moved to a container in the field where our office was based (our office was also a container). It was incredibly hot in there but luckily we could jump in the freezing outdoor showers if it ever got too overwhelming. The project leaders, Zoli and Orsi, were wonderful and really helpful throughout. It seemed like we had entered at a point where there personal lives were quite hectic and this may have caused tensions and affected their work sometimes (we were a very very small team) but all in all, they are wonderful, positive people and it was a joy to be there with them. I learn a lot about the inner workings of NGOs and am currently freelancing for an environmental charity in London.

EVS is such a great way to meet and work with like-minded people in a place you may have never thought you would visit before. Being British, I think it's very easy to forgot the fact that we are European citizens and think of mainland Europe as 'other' to the UK. Having volunteered in a highly disadvantaged area of Hungary for 8 months with 4 other volunteers from Spain, Portugal and Romania, I feel so much more strongly connected to Europe and feel very lucky to have the freedom to move around this land. London can be a hard place to meet and connect with people, and to sustain long term friendships. Having done EVS, I feel that I have gained a network of friends all over Europe who I have made a genuine connection with, and who I know I will see again in the future.  

Ami

EVS Volunteer 2015

Read about Ami's EVS in Hungary!

Read about Ami and her EVS experiences in Hungary!

For the last four months, I have been a volunteer at Fenntartható Ormánság Nonprofit Kft in Kémes, Hungary. Having lived mostly in London, this EVS project seemed like a great opportunity for me to experience a far more rural, village-based lifestyle - which is exactly what I got! Currently, we (myself and 4 other volunteers from Spain, Portugal and Transylvania) live in a typical village house with a big garden where we have to chop wood to put in the furnace in order to heat the house, and run after the musical gas van in order to get gas containers for our cooker. We also have two lovely chickens which supply us with fresh eggs! The main focus of the organisation is sustainability and engaging with the local community, and using creative methods to connect people. Through this, I have been able to cycle all around the Ormánság region as well as to Croatia, and I also teach English on a weekly basis. We have met many colourful characters on our travels, and I am always humbled by the kindness of the people here despite this being one of the poorest regions of Hungary. Some of the best meetings have taken place during the analogue photography workshop, where we were lucky enough to learn analogue techniques and how to develop photographs in our self made dark room. In the near future, we hope to showcase these in an exhibition in the nearest city and also around Ormánság. We also have a lot of manual projects lined up involving recycling materials, including the building of a plastic bottle greenhouse. So far, this has been an incredible time spent in Hungary, but I think the best is yet to come (Spring is finally here!). Living in a country where you don't speak the main language, with a completely different political and economic situation to your own country and in a totally new environment can be especially daunting. I believe that by putting yourself outside of the environment and society you are usually surrounded by allows you to understand the world around you maybe just a bit better, and that this is truly invaluable.


Kind Regards,
Ami Udeshi

 

News from our EVS Volunteer in Hungary!

Our EVS Volunteer, Abi, is five months in to her 11 month placement in Hungary. If you like the sound of her project--you're in luck! Compass is looking for another EVS volunteer to start in July. 

Find more info HERE , or email evs@concordiavolunteers.org.uk  

Sziastok from Hungary!  My name is Abi, I am 22 years old, and I have been an EVS volunteer in Kaposvár, Hungary for about 5 months.  I am therefore now living proof that you actually can go and live abroad for a year, at virtually no cost to yourself (flights, food, accommodation and pocket money all paid), so long as you are willing to volunteer as for the European Voluntary Service.

 In Kaposvár I am a volunteer for Compass Európai Ifjúsági Közösségért Egyesület, which does three main jobs together with quite a few other smaller ones.   

So they:

• Promote Youth Exchanges and EVS to local people, especially in schools.
• Act as a sending, hosting and co-ordinating organisation for EVS and a sending organisation for Youth Exchange.
• Hold language clubs where local people of any age can come and practice their language skills with a native speaker for 500 HUF per hour – which is about £1.45.  

They also:

• Hold dance clubs and drama clubs
• Coordinate volunteering at the local theatre and cinema
• Visit a kindergarten to help the children with creative activities
• Help out at community events like festivals and marathons
• Visit rural villages
• And more…

I can definitely say that since I’ve been at Compass, no week has been the same!

Compass EVS volunteers (and there are 15 of us now, soon to be more) live together in two flats in the city centre.  We come from Romania, Turkey, France, Germany, the UK, Spain and Italy.  I share a room, something I haven’t done since I was seven years old.  But it’s good fun. You learn something new every day, whether it’s about someone’s language, or their religion, or what they like to eat for breakfast.  And in return, you get to show people what tea with milk tastes like.

One of the best things about living in Hungary is that suddenly everything becomes more exciting. We shop at Tesco and Lidl, where there are rows and rows of cottage cheese some of which is covered in chocolate.  There’s almost no butter, and the only butter there is comes in tiny pats of 100g each.  There are huge jars of pickled vegetables of almost every kind imaginable, rows and rows and rows of cold meat, a tank full of live fish, almost no brown bread, and chocolate with custard, apricot and biscuit, Oreos, blueberry, pear, caramel, yoghurt, and rice.  Even a supermarket can be an adventure.  

As for Kaposvár itself, it’s beautiful.  There are huge buildings of many colours, pink, yellow, green, blue, orange; broad streets; fountains; statues (this is the city of painters); and green spaces everywhere, including a very scenic lake behind Tesco.  On Sundays you can go down to a market where old women sell live rabbits and honey and vegetables and enormous underwear.  And if you go into the bakeries you can get freshly baked bread and poppy-seed cakes, or cherry strudel, or rolls just out of the oven. 

As for the volunteering?  I can only say I’ve learnt a lot.  Before I came I was slightly terrified of small children.  But now I’ve spent hours playing with them at kindergarten, I’m not even fazed when a small boy sticks his finger up his nose and then wants to hold my hand.  I’ve taken classes of primary school children and teenagers by myself and lived to tell the tale.  And now I have no fear of approaching anyone to talk in a lively fashion about the delights of Youth Exchanges – even if I have to do it in my terrible Hungarian.  Sometimes it’s difficult: people are so afraid of seeming stupid or not being able to understand that they don’t even want to try saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ‘the sun is shining’.  But that only makes it more satisfying when they do suddenly pluck up the courage to have a go.  And other times it’s really easy and fun.  I once went to a class in a local high school with another volunteer to give the students the task of introducing themselves with a lie.  Before we told them the task I explained that I was the daughter of Prince Charles and had been given an elephant for my birthday which I rode to school every day.  And the lies they told in return were fantastic: we had the third anti-christ, Jesus’ cat, a lion hunter and the divorced wife of a sheikh who had a camel fetish.

And in between language clubs and visiting schools and kindergartens and office work there’s always something else going on.  We spent three days walking around the city centre in period costume as part of the Festival of Painters.  I’ve handed out nuts and water and dried fruit to runners of half-marathons.  I’ve made at least 50 flags for children to wave at the Day of Poets.  And I’m always looking forward to the next challenge and surprise…