Save the ruins of a Slovak monastery - Katarinka

The first quarter of the year 2015 we successfully realiseda period of trainings and workshops whose target group were our new young volunteers. The training period consisted of 5 trainings, each of them lasted the whole weekend and, during which our enthusiasts challenged themselves a great deal. A character of all our trainings and workshops is based on delivery of experiences gained by older volunteers to newbies; it is very dynamic and demanding since the trainees need to get a deep and detailed look into how the whole organisation Katarínka functions. The main weekend training called "Hlavné tovarišstvo" was traditionally organised in March and the volunteers were given general information about the organisation itself as well as about the way how to organise and prepare a summer camp, and how to solve problematic situations. Apart from this they also learnt about fundraising and to become a member of one of Katarínka´s teams (for example: fundraising team, financial team, team in charge of cooking at events, etc.). 

KThe strengthening of the network is important part of empowering the whole organisation and preparation for new season.  Thus, this period was also important for teams supporting OZ Katarinka throughout the year. Volunteers were meeting, discussing about new steps, organising small events, teambuildings. They were working on propagation of the project, fundraising, they were planning restorating work on monument for the new summer season. All of this is done by young people enthusiastic about our organisation. They are growing through new tasks and challenges they take. 

We are trying to make all our training as informal as possible, to enable transfer of experiences form one volunteer to another by means of discussion, group Works, brainstorming etc.

One of the goal of OZ Katarínka is to informally educate youngster in Slovakia and enable them to personally grow. Thus this year, we prepared a new training for our volunteers – one focused on leadership skills. There are many areas in life when a person needs to be a leader – so we decide to bring this topic closer to our volunteers, who are supporting Katarínka longer and we learned and discussed many topics related to everyday-leadership in our lives.