Since the beginning of July, five new volunteers have begun working under two new projects by EVS – YDCMA’s “The(y) Volunteers” and NGO National Movement workshop Sedyanka’s “Once upon a time … until today”. The volunteers are from Italy, Slovakia, France and Portugal.

The volunteers will stay here until the projects endm respectively 11 and 8 months.

Their work is related to further development of the Volunteers’ newsletter, work at the volunteer centers for kids and elderly, and the homes for elderly №1 and №3 in the town.

They spent their first week here mainly getting to know the city, the historical landmarksm thanks to our partnership with “Historical museum Iskra”, and work with other partners of YDCMA.

From their first impressions it became clear to us that they were not familiar with the cultural differences they would experience, which led to a slight cultural shock, when they were faced with the reality here. To them East Europe is something rather “whole”, and apart from the girl from Slovakia none of them knew much about the separate countries.

Next week they will begin to study Bulgarian and slowly but surely theywill get acquainted with our culture.