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A week in the life of a volunteer

Location: Roestavi, Georgië

After writing a lot about traveling in my past blogs, I now want to write about my life in Rustavi. Although I have travelled a lot in the past months, most of my time I spend in Rustavi volunteering. So far, I really enjoy it and Rustavi starts to feel like home more and more. The volunteer work is something I enjoy as well, I like that it is quite diverse. We are going to a lot of different schools and institutions to do activities or English clubs there. Next to this, we are organizing activities and weekend camps in the scout center. To give others (and potential future volunteers) a better idea of ​​what volunteer work really entails, I will take you on a week in the life of a volunteer.

Monday 

I mostly start my mondays in the office. The office is a 20 minute walk from our appartment. We start working at 11:00, so around 10:30 I leave the apartment and walk to the office. At the office I always first check the calendar, to see what I have to do that week. I spend most of my time at the office preparing activities for the week. 


Every other week two volunteers are going to Edustep on Monday in the afternoon. Edustep is a private language school in new-Rustavi. We give informal English speaking classes there. On monday we join the adolescent group. We choose a certain topic and around this topic we prepare games or questions. The goal of these lessons is to improve the English speaking skills of the participants. So far I really enjoy going to Edustep, the most fun is that you now slowly see the improvement in English of the participants. 

Tuesday 

On Tuesday I start early. At 10:20 I have to be at Kesane. So around 09:45 I leave the house and take a bus to new-Rustavi. Kesane is a day activity center for people with disabilities. We are volunteering in the adult group. On Tuesday morning they have an arts and crafts activity which we join. Our task here is to join the activity and to interact with the people. This can be a challenge, because our Georgian is not that good and they of course do not speak English. This teaches us to communicate without words. What I like is that the people are always very happy and grateful that we join them. Now that we have been volunteering here for a longer period of time, you can see that we are getting to know each other better, which makes communication easier.

On Tuesday in the afternoon I always go to the School of Innovations. This is a school in new-Rustavi. They have a lot of after-school clubs for high school students, which we can join. So on Tuesday I am mostly joining their Wushu club. Here we learn the basics of Wushu. 

Usually one of the volunteers organises an arts and crafts activity on Tuesday evening in the scout center. Examples of arts and crafts workshops I organised in the past months are: Urban sketching, collage making, drawing comics, crafting animals from toilet paper rolls, painting, hand lettering and painting stones. When I don’t organise the workshop myself, I sometimes decide to join the workshop for fun! 

   

                      

Wednesday 

On Wednesday I volunteer at Kesane. We start the day at 10:20 with a sports lesson. We mostly play games with a ball, do stretches and sometimes dance. After a small lunch break, we join their drawing activity, in which we all make a nice drawing. After their drawing lesson they have a music lesson where we play games with the rhythm, instruments or dancing. The last lesson we join is the singing lesson, in which they will sing Georgian songs. It is very nice to listen to this and after a while I start to recognise some songs! 

After I finish my volunteering at Kesane I will go to the office or work from home. 

Thursday 

I mostly spend my Thursdays in the office. I continue with preparing activities and do my other office related tasks. These tasks are for example: networking (contacting (international) organisations to explore possible collaboration with ISCR) or writing a blog about my volunteer experience. Sometimes we have a meeting with all volunteers. For example a meeting about which activities we will do next month or a meeting about a weekend camp. 

Every Thursday evening we have an English Conversation club at the scout center. What we do in the Conversation Club is similar to what we do at Edustep. We prepare a topic and around this topic we play games and ask questions. The goal of this club is to improve the English speaking skills of the participants. 

     

Friday 

Friday we organise informal English classes at the school of innovations (this is similar to our Edustep lessons and conversation club). Charlotte and I are currently teaching the 4th and the 7th grade. Although this is sometimes challenging, it’s also really fun! 

Every Friday evening two volunteers are going to Edustep to give a lesson to the adult group. So once or twice every month I will go to Edustep on fridays. 

Weekend 

Sometimes we organise a day camp during the weekend, mostly on saturdays. When we organise a weekend camp, we will have another day off during the week. The day camps are mostly focussed on a topic. We did for example an environmental camp, a theatre camp, a team-building camp and a camp focussed on arts & crafts and games. Mostly around 20 to 30 children will come to our weekend camps. During the camps we will do different games and activities with them. Although this is one of our most challenging tasks (it is sometimes hard to manage a group of 30 children), I have to say that it is also one of our most rewarding tasks. The children are always excited and happy when we organise these camps. 


When we have a free day or weekend we travel, do something with all volunteers, or have a chill day. Last month, we went ice skating and went to the opera together!

Final thoughts on volunteering in Rustavi 

I hope that by reading this blog, you will have a better understanding of my tasks as a volunteer. I have to say that I am describing my tasks as a volunteer, these are not the same for all volunteers. ISCR gives you quite a lot of freedom in what you can do as tasks. This is nice, because you can do the activities that match your interests and skills. Other volunteers are for example going to schools to help with German classes, organise French classes in the scout center or are helping with swimming lessons. 

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