Volunteers' support

Today we asked our volunteer Julian who came from Austria to share impressions on his voluntary year within Erasmus + Youth program in our organization (sic):

«My name is Julian Flandorfer and by the end of September this year my first year of European Voluntary Service in the charitable organization Shag Navstrechu (Step Forward) will have finished.

The hardest period of my stay in Russia mentally were the first couple of weeks. Moreover, I have never been to Russia before and I have stayed without my parents for the first time and had to care about my daily routine myself. Also this was the first time I’ve worked in summer not being on a summer internship.

Before joining EVS I was doing aikido and I decided to continue doing dojo not to stop developing myself. As I have already been familiar with aikido, this helped a lot understand what people were talking about, thus these classes became useful also in terms of learning Russian language.

Children and teens living in an orphanage understand the world in a different way, and this is what I am interested in. They often make me think about what is considered to be common and how behavior of people who have unfortunately grown up in partial isolation from the rest of the world and society is different.

After a few months and especially after summer camps new jokes appeared between kids and volunteers, as well as common interests and a relaxed atmosphere that allowed everybody to develop.

In conclusion I advise those who haven’t done it yet to live longterm in another country: it gives amazing opportunities for developing oneself, your linguistic and social skills, self-sufficiency and a lot more!»