“A warm welcome to Dayrina!”

In september we started with a new EVS project and so Dayrina Barros from Portugal has come to meet Zveza ŠKIS, Slovenia and will help us with our project. We invite you to read her first blog.

Hello my name is Dayrina Barros and on this blog i will share with you my experience which i will reach during my European Voluntary Service project.

The purpose of my blog is to share experience and to help people live this adventure and to convince them to decide for the same option.

Who actually am I?..well I am  Dayrina, i am 24 years old… born in Angola … I grew up in Portugal.

I have always been a big dreamer, very curious and very dynamic. Characteristics that made me a person with is prepared to do everything. In past i participated in a lot of activities with different groups and few of them I will mention in my blog.

Firstly, I started to participate in different activities because I was so curious of them. But then I meet a lot of friends and when I found out that those people have the same objectives as me, I decide to stay with them together and contine with that kind of work.

Here are some of the activities and entities that made me come here today …

• MCM (Association for More citizenship)-it was the Association which showed me that it would be possible to transform the way in which we live. MCM was responsible for the formation and creation of the main objectives of the Association that was born in 2005, the AJA.

• AJA (Youth Association of an appeal) –The association AJA consisting of students and young workers, who decided to show some social responsibilities in society where they are living. Until today we continue with realizing projects, which gives young people what they need for changing their own personality.

• Club volleyball-was an experience outside of the context in which I learned what word Teamwork actually means, because through the wins and failures,  we learned how to live as a group.

• Social Action – was a course in which I graduated and get me closer to the problems of society, through which i became more open minded and i show more care for society.

• In free time i also read some books, from which helped me with to involve in different situations  and they also encourage my imagination.

• People who met – professionals from diverse areas who shared with me their personal views on different things in life. And who always encouraged me to dream and follow my dreams.

• Charm by talking-the speach, always had great difficulty learning to talk, but as I consider myself as a good listener, i can understand easily different thoughts and ideas.
• Lectures I attended lectures at the University-about the image, and business impacts of certain behaviors that we have in society, or even how to identify the needs in a given place increased willingness to share the useful strategies.

• Exchanges – allowed me to travel around some countries of Europe and beyond to increase my vision of the world outside the borders of Portugal. It was also opportunity for me to see differences, which made me as a person special, because it gives me as a person a lot of differences and also things i had inside of me, but i didnt realized them before the travelling. Those kind of things made me more awareness.

• Beauty fashon shows-I love fashion,because of this i participated in that kind of events  and promote the most beautiful and visible side of the person.

In case that i reached a lot of different experiences in past i decided to do/try something new. So when the call for being an EVS volunteer in Slovenia came, i saw it as a great opportunity. There was a call for project »Local youth work through the eye of objective«, which takes 9 months  staying in Slovenia and working as an EVS volunteer at Association ŠKIS. Because i already have a lot of knowledge and experiences which i would like to share with others and because there is a lot of things which i would like to reach and learn and because i would like to meet new group of people and try new things with them in a different society, which shows a lot of feelings for youth and youth work.
I know that I will acquire bonus of learning, because I am student , and I will certainly improve the linguistic skills as well as cultural relativity and strategies of tourist promotion and very different communities and groups ages.

My first impression about Slovenia, was positive because my mentors are very friendly and dynamic, and they are in the same age as me, some of them also younger.
My mentors me took me to visit more places around the city and showed the symbolic projects that perform in association ŠKIS. I was very pleasured by the place of city life and calm, where people are peaceful, where a lot of people choose to cycling what particularly pleasured me enough. The food is  very good, a bit different than food in my country, but very tasty.
I can say that here I will be happy, but still wondering, if will survive the cold winter?..we will see..

See you soon (ate breve) .

Bjs, Dayrina.