Once you started you can never stop!

Hey Hey! This year brought a lot of change into our life, but it wasn’t enough for me. I wanted more. I wanted to travel, to get to know new cultures after finishing my high school this year. Originally I wanted to do a social volunteering year abroad in Peru but well Corona, this is why I looked after ESC projects in Europe.

At the beginning of September I found a short term project in Zagreb,Croatia. Where I worked with 12 other volunteers in an NGO called OAZA. After these two month I was hooked and I just wanted the experience of more exchanges, meet new people and get to know another culture. So at the beginning of december when I was back in Germany I spent the whole month looking after other ESC term projects and I found the Active Bulgarian Society. So here I am in Bulgaria in a time where everyone says it’s impossible to travel. But sometimes you just have to do the impossible to follow your dreams, mine is it to travel and get to know new cultures. So far I have learned a lot in only 12 days. I learned how to write the Georgian alphabet, I learned difference traditional dances from a Spanish Sevilla to a Ukrainian wedding dance. But also the Bulgarian culture which was unknown to me. And this is what an ESC is all about, learning not only something about the Bulgarian culture but also about the culture from the other volunteers. And I got lucky because we have volunteers from Georgia, Ukraine, Spain, France so I can learn a lot of new things yeah. I arrived on Monday so I joined the others in the office after lunch. There I met the people I’m going to spend the next two months with for the first time. Everyone was so friendly and I’m really looking forward to spending the next two months together. And also the office tasks are really flexible and it’s our turn to figure out what kind of events we want to plan. Therefore we have a lot of freedom to pursue our visions and ideas, which I love.

The great thing about ABS is that they make a lot of projects with locals such as a chat club, cleaning events etc. and this way you are really able to get to know locals and learn more about how people live here. This is something you don’t have when you just travel in a country for like two weeks. This is one of the many reasons why I can only recommend the European Solidarity Corps Programme to everyone. The first weekend we went to Kartala, which was incredible, I think I haven’t seen that much snow in 10 years, therefore it was magical.

Last weekend we have been to Sofia, it was such a fun time and the city has it's own charm. I think what I like most is that all the different religions live peacefully next to each other. There is a square where a mosque, a synagogue, and a church are standing next to one another, which shows how diverse and culturally rich the city and the country is. This article is created by Elisabeth Röbisch as part of her personal project at the Active Bulgarian Society. She is a participant in the "ESC: European Skills and Competencies" project, co-funded by the Bulgarian National Agency of Erasmus+ Program Human Resource Development Center. She did her

Young people who are interested to volunteer for the Active Bulgarian Society for 2-3 months, are warmly invited to send us an application to: ntepass@visioneers.io.