EVS Survival Guide

Before going to Belfast we knew nothing about what it looks like, if it is possible to survive with only volunteer pocket money, what we need to take except for 2 suitcases full of clothes, in which rooms and with whom we are going to live etc. We didn’t have any problems to accustom to the new environment but if you don’t expect something you can feel upset being far from home. Different people decide to try volunteering. Some of them are very young and never lived away from their relatives and friends, some of them lead an independent life and had a lot of experience at work and as a result they are used to living in comfort and getting normal salary monthly. But, obviously, even though you didn’t have a big family or a good job you will notice there is a challenge to overcome some obstacles. We would like to tell about our experience and give some advices about living in the UK and Belfast.

Communication

Don’t worry about communication. In Ireland there are the friendliest people in the world. If your English isn’t very good it is not a disaster. Ask people a million times. They like black humour so this is the only thing you need to get used to. Don’t take offence, don’t be too serious. Just learn by heart who you are, where you are from, what your organization does, what you did before. During the next months you will need to tell people this information every day or every weekend.

The Weather 

1. From the first day of the winter buy a fan heater. Although you probably have visited the UK before as a tourist it is not the same to live in a volunteer or a student house. They all are provided with gas or oil heating system but as it is quite expensive to use your housemates wouldn’t be happy to put it on 24/7. And even if the radiators are on it might happen, that the rooms don’t feel as if they get warmed up. That’s why such a heater is really helpful in the morning and before going to bed, even though it also takes a lot of electricity and shouldn’t be used the whole day. So if you are afraid that your room won’t be spacious enough, start worrying that it will be too spacious to be well-heated.
 2. Don’t hesitate to take more warm clothes, especially for home for the same reason (however, in local shops there are the warmest pyjamas in the world and they are quite cheap, so decide what is better for you). Having a hot water bottle and a comfy throw for your bed is also very helpful and makes you want to stay in your bed forever.
3. Don’t panic about the cold. It can break your will. Just complain about it every day to everybody. It makes you feel much better – some people have the same situation, some will invite you to get warm or say that they are sorry to you.
 4. Belfast is a damp city. It is not raining every day like you can read on the Internet; the weather is just changing very quickly, which also means that rain doesn’t have to last very long. We were happy to discover that there are a lot of sunny days with a clear sky. Wake up in the morning and use these days to walk a lot in winter.
 5. Places where you can get warmed for free or cheap: - library - botanic gardens - museums with no admission fees like Ulster museum or MAC - pubs (literally if you don’t want to drink anything no one cares) - your office (just start being a workaholic!) - sometimes cinema - buses - some churches.

Safety

Belfast is a pretty safe city. THERE IS NO WAR in Northern Ireland (tell your parents). Moreover you can walk all districts yourself without guards or even local people.

Medicine 

Something amazing in the UK is, that you can register in a health centre and get all medical services for free (basically, you don’t need to pay, then send your expenses to your insurance company and wait for your money).
Something not so good (but understandable) is, that you need to wait very long for your appointment, but actually you can also use the emergency time slots if you are not feeling well, you should just always phone before you go to the medical practice. Therefore you don’t have to wait very long, there are even signs that say that you should tell the receptionists in case you’re waiting more than 20 minutes already!

Money

Actually, it’s not so hard to live with your EVS money. There are a lot of free or cheap charity events, most galleries and museums have no admission fee so you won’t feel a lack of events in your life. It is more complicated if you want to go shopping very often (not for food and vital things) and if you would like to travel outside of Ireland, but let’s be honest: that’s not what the allowance is meant to cover, so you can have a nice life out of the money you get! Anyway, a piece of advice – check not only Tesco supermarket. It can be time consuming but you will save some pounds for travel tickets or something else: some things accidently can be found in Lidl, pound shops or other places. Basically, you can find everything here for only one pound (depends only on season, sales and amount). This week you can buy apples for one pound and the other week – pears. Just look at sales shelves and choose what is cheaper and try to remember prices for necessary foods in different places.


Transport

You can easily walk to a lot of places and sometimes you can even discover some new, interesting places through this. If you are not used to the left-hand traffic, you should watch out a bit more for the first few weeks until you know from which side a car might come. Anyway, even though there are a lot of traffic lights, it doesn’t mean everyone cares about it, at least not the pedestrians. People here are crossing the streets nearly all the time. A red light only means that a car might come along, but if you don’t see any, why should you wait? And even if a car is coming, they often wait patiently until everyone crossed the street. If you decide to take the bus, get a pink metro pre-paid card that you can top up with journeys to use whenever you get on the bus. This way you are only paying 95p instead of £1.90 per journey. Don’t worry if you’re waiting on the bus stop and the bus isn’t coming – it is normal that buses aren’t always on time and sometimes don’t come at all, but people here know about it, so it shouldn’t be a problem if you’re late because of that If you get off the bus: don’t forget to say “Thank you” or a usual “Cheers” to the bus driver! As we said before: people here are very friendly and polite. If you’re planning to travel outside of Belfast you don’t have to worry about a lack of transport as well: the train system is well established and there are enough Coaches to various places all over the island and a lot of them even drive regularly during the night! For travelling to Belfast it might be easier and cheaper to fly to Dublin and just getting one of the coaches from the Airport to Belfast.

Housemates 

Probably you will share a house with other people, maybe students, PHDs or maybe even other volunteers. However you’ll be excited to meet them but don’t worry if they maybe don’t become your best friends during the year or if they don’t like a clean bathroom as much as you do. (Cleaning rotas might help but of course they don’t always do – take it with humour and see it as a lesson for life, because it certainly won’t be the last time that you’ll live together with others) You won’t have problems to find nice people or new friends during your EVS time, you’ll meet a lot of people through your work, through other volunteers, in your neighbourhood or simply on parties and if you can’t chum up with your housemates just befriend with other people! It is certainly nice to have a living house community but it can be nice to get to know a lot of people from ‘outside’ as well. Take things as they are and make the best out of it!

Irina&Isabel

WE LOVE YOUTH WORK - volunteering in other countries compared to the UK

Volunteering in Russia isn't developed at all. Moreover, if you are a volunteer you are considered to be a some kind of odd person if you don't do it in another country for your own profit and experience. Volunteering and youth clubs are connected with something not very nice and prestigious because of our past. 
In the 90s when a lot of unpleasant facts about USSR leaders and party members were discovered and published, people’s opinion about many things changed. To be active in social life in the USSR acquired a new meaning: it was connected with slander and repressions. Now some people also think that volunteering means to be devoted to Putin's politics. 
Of course, USSR citizens did some volunteering work – it was expected by the state- but most of them don’t feel bad about that experience now. Moreover they reckon that society was kinder and more caring. But we have lost all these beliefs during 10-20 years of government’s and people’s total indifference. 
Now only 1,5% of people are involved in regular volunteering and some big brands do charity to avoid high taxes– what a shame for such a huge country that has a lot of problems to solve. It doesn't mean people are bad or evil in Russia. Most of them are ready to offer a helping hand to everybody in need. It seems that old people have lost their beliefs in the bright future with ideal society and the youth isn’t well educated about what being a volunteer means. 
This is also my first experience of volunteering (yes, in a different country) and since I’ve been living in Belfast I can’t stop being surprised how everybody reacts when you tell them you are a volunteer in a youth organisation – they are just delighted with what you do and then you discover they are also volunteers (even though they have good jobs and a lack of free time). Their example is very encouraging. 
But they weren’t born as volunteers. Someone taught them why it was important; someone showed them that it’s not a shame to be a volunteer like it is considered to be in Russia. Comparing to my country where we don’t have a lot of youth organizations (or we just don’t know about them) I would definitely say that it’s youth organizations contribution that people are active in Northern Ireland. 
So, this is what people should think about before introducing cuts – won't the harm caused be bigger than it is expected to be? 


Volunteering in Germany
In 2014 around 16,6% of the population were volunteering on a regular basis (approx. 36% were at least involved at some point in voluntary work) and indeed this was my impression as well: apart from 12 months voluntary services young people do after graduating from school, volunteering isn’t something that is absolutely common in Germany. 
Of course it exists, people do it – especially within childcare and youth work, local issues and churches – but people are more surprised if you do it, than if you don’t, at least that was my experience.  Before I did volunteering in my free time I only knew two more people who actively did it as well – and believe me, I know a lot of people. Whenever I told people about my volunteering job they were surprised and sometimes asked me why I was doing it or maybe thought I was a super-nice-charity-person, when I was actually just doing something that’s fun for me and where I can gain experience and spend my time in a good way. Among young people it is rather common to have a job for earning some extra money after school or going to sports-, music-, or arts clubs that are offered at schools or other institutions. 

I have the feeling that here – in the UK – volunteering is something absolutely normal, something that belongs to your life and that everybody does at least once in their lifetime. A lot of other EVS volunteers we’ve talked to, who come from a range of countries like Spain, Italy or Romania, thought the same and compared on an international level you can actually see that volunteering in the UK is highly developed:  I thought this was really positive and gives a lot of organisations, especially in the youth work sector, the chance to develop very good projects.
I also have the impression that here youth work is much more developed than in Germany. Yes, we have youth clubs as well, but at least my experience was, that it’s all really separated by ‘class’: children and young people from poorer backgrounds go to youth clubs, whereas those with a wealthier background are rather members in sports clubs, take music lessons or sometimes participate in the clubs that are offered by schools, but aren’t really addressed by the youth work sector and therefore youth work could be seen as something that should solve problems of young people, when really it should be seen as something that is simply part of growing up and offering young people a space to develop and grow. 
Probably this differs between the regions, but this was my experience. 
That’s why we think the volunteering and youth work situation here (with around 29% of the population volunteering on a regular basis and over 40% somehow involved in voluntary activities) shouldn’t be taken for granted. Even if volunteers do the work they do because they want to and decide it for themselves, it doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be valued. They dedicate their time and do important work for society and without them a lot of projects and organisations couldn’t do the amount of work they do. But for achieving good results it requires trained and paid workers who are running those organisations, are able to train the volunteers and make sure that their work is of high quality and of course work on projects themselves. 
The impact that the proposed cuts would have is explained very well in this info graphic. So it's definitely worth thinking about the results that the budget plans would have and how it could put the current achievements on a risky position. 

WE LOVE YOUTH WORK
#weloveyw

Isabel & Ira

Hi  EVS boys and EVS girls,

Happy New Year and hope you are well on your first day after holidays.

Me and Isabel had pretty good vacation but she is flying over the Irish sea from Germany, probably, right now.

I stayed in Belfast for Christmas and New Year, and thanks to our coordinator Debs, who had invited me to the Christmas dinner with her family, I felt as a part of great holidays with many new but kind and friendly people.

Seems, this post is going to be about Christmas food again since I can’t stay apart my first proper Christmas dinner experience (but wait, there are shots of breathtaking Irish nature below).

I think like in any European country, turkey here is a main course and other foods are served in addition to it. But in the UK and Ireland there are some traditional sauces and spices except for cranberry, that you can try to cook someday.

Bread sauce with onion – very simple but surprisingly tasty.

Plum chutney – some kind of vinegar but not liquid.

I’ve known as well that there are a lot of kinds of apples in Ireland that are grown just for cooking and baking. So we had dozens of desserts and an excellent apple pie. Not just an apple pie, you know, but a special one.

After meals we had a little walk before the sunset. 

Before NY we drove to the north-eastern coast that bowled me over completely with its beauty – endless green fields with meek sheep but wild rocks and lumpy sea. I bet that even though Game of Thrones used a lot of green screen and special effects it is not beautiful enough compare to the real landscapes. If locals like travelling to Scotland it is hard to imagine how marvellous it is too.

I hadn’t expected to see Scottish shores through the mist and clouds, I had thought it was so far.

Other knowledge I got visiting Ulster museum, hit me as well. 600 mln years ago there had been two different lands (red spots), which moved towards each other and formed Ireland (look how far they were from each other). Although it had happened quite long ago I could hardly believe in it.

I realised I knew nothing about Ireland and I feel more inspired to travel along the whole coast during my EVS year.

Ira