Hi there!

Last  week we welcomed a new volunteer from Ireland, she will stay here for three months and her name is Aoife.

Here are we in a restaurant eating Georgian traditional food.

We also had some of the Sapovnela kids (a youth center) here on a animation workshop that Natia (who are going to Latvia for a long term EVS) was in charge of.
We also played some games with them that seemed to be appriciated.

 On Saturday we went to play pool and to drink some beer in new part of Rustavi. We will for sure go there again!











 


Now it is Monday again, which means work. Later this day we will have Conversation Club with some college girls!

Youth exchange in Sweden!

A few months ago we started to think about writing a youth exchange within the Youth in action programme, to bring youth from Georgia and Poland to our home city in Sweden, Vänersborg.
We knew that we wanted to write a youth exchange about human- and equal rights, but it took some time to structure to whole idea to a complete youth exchange project.
After many hours of thinking, writing, deleting and writing again... we were finally finished and submitted the application for the February deadline.
About a week ago, we got the answer that the project is approved!

We will bring 6 participants+1 leader form each country, all and all we will be 22 people (2 leaders form Sweden). We will have different daily topics to discuss and work with in different ways.
What is human and equal rights? Gender equality, Identity - nationality, religion, sexual orientations.
We are also planning to do a trip to Swedens second biggest city to visit the organisation RFSL that are working to spread information about equal rights for people with a different sexual orientation than the "norm". We will invite a guest speaker to talk about identity connected to nationality and relgion. He is from Somalia and immigrated in the early 90´s. And many other things...
We will sleep in cottages close to the nature with swimming opportunities.

It feels great to have created something during our time here that hopefully will give a long term impact for the youngster who will participate.

Wish us luck!

21 April 2012 : Earth day in Rustavi

Georgian Youth for Europe organised for the Earth day a special event for people. Presentation about snakes, quizz about Earth, film about plainting trees, comics video about environment, a cleaning action near the office.......and planting tree to finish.



Yoann, your apprentice journalist.

Adam's trip to Kurdistan

Because Georgia is so close to Middle-East, I've decided to spent my Christmas/New Year's Eve time in near Turkey and Iraq! First I planned Armenia, but then I realized that Kurdish regions in those 2 countries are so close, and I wanted to go there for years... Well, in short summary I can say, that it's worth to go to such regions, just to confront stupid stereotypes. War and kurdish fights with turkish army- this is what we hear mostly about this region. In general, when we're watching TV or reading news, we could think- this world sucks and going to an end! But, if we just go there and meet those people... We can change our mind, we can see how hospitable, friendly and good are people, who we never met before!

Urfa

in Mardin donkeys are still popular transport for arabic merchants

Mardin

kurdish flag on iraqi border

park in kurdish capitol, Erbil

Ankawa has a big Christian community

kurdish family hosted were really great people

georgian-turkish border in Sarpi

all the time in Turkey kids were accosting me- sometimes for photo, more often for money

Adam in Mardin:)

Hasankeyf

Hasankeyf

Anyways, Kurdistan is very beautiful place, with many historical sights and nature. And the most important- amazing people!
I hope I'll be able to come back there someday, to spend there much more time, than only two weeks:-)

Adam

Ps. For those, who can read polish, here is my article about this trip:  http://www.psz.pl/tekst-40905/Autostopem-przez-Kurdystan

Siusiu- best dog in Rustavi!

In the middle of February we found, on our street, very cute, small puppy... She was all wet and dirty, she was begging for a piece of bread... So we decide very quickly to help her! We took her home, washed and feed. Our boss, Lekso wasn't very happy about keeping her in the flat, so after +/- one month we had to move her somewhere... It was hard for us, and especially for her, because she get used to us and our place. But yeah...
So now, she get her "dog house" in the yard of the scout house in Rustavi, and she seems to be used to that place already... We are buying and bringing food for her, I hope that when we'll leave Georgia, someone else will take care of her, for example future EVS-volunteers in Rustavi, or those who will work or stay in scout house.

Our dream is to find her a new, real home, but in georgian realities, where people don't care about dogs (especially when the dog is not from some special breed!) it can be really hard... If you know someone who love dogs and could take care of her- let us know!

Cheers,
Adam