by Lovis Assmann


Radu Bajureanu, 33, Member of "Board of Directors" at Association of International Volunteering, Moldova


Radu, why did you decide to come to this seminar, particularly to this seminar "Discover, Join & Act"?

- well, in my country I do the same work, I want to share the experience, I want to gain new experience and I want to see how this work works in other countries and I want to see how far Moldova did a good job.

So it was more for your personal social advantage as a leading work craft in the work you do in Moldova

- yes

Alright. Did you have any expectations about this seminar, did you have any clear pictures in mind what you want to do here and how the results could look like?

-yes, here I found new ideas which I want to apply to my work back home.

What ideas?

- Like how they organize the workshops here and also how they evaluate them, it's a little different from how we do in Moldova/

Ok. So, before you came here, what did you think were you able to contribute to this seminar?

- a few things... yeah, first my energy :)..

That’s a good point :)..

- yes I know, jokes, energy.. You need it sometimes, especially when you have a lot of work to do. If you talk about practical contributions, I organize workshops about justice and human rights in Moldova so I can share my experience with these issues.

Ok very good. Let's now move on to the workshops we had today. Which workshops did you choose?

- I picked the workshop about "what is volunteering" with Maud and the second one was.... also with Maud..... I don't quite remember the name of it...

Which workshop do you think can you tell more about?

- the one about volunteering. I think it's a good question, it is simple but it is also difficult for example when you try to explain to old people why you are doing voluntary work. especially in Moldova it is very difficult to motivate people to such work because they say: "why should I do voluntary work if I can do paid work?"

Yes I understand.. What expectations did you have in this workshop?

- to learn new ideas, e. g. how to explain to people who live in the countryside what we are doing and what they think about it and it was very funny to collect different ideas about how to convince people from rural areas to do voluntary work.

What did you do in this workshop?

- sharing my ideas

Well it was not only you sharing your ideas was it :)?

- no, there were also other people sharing :)...

Ok how did the structure of this workshop look like?

- well, first we talked about "what is volunteering?" and we did a short brainstorming about it, then we tried to personalize and socialize the topic, we talked about how volunteering benefits you personally and then what it contributes to society, public and local administrations, to the NGO's and other structures..

So you felt like everyone was included very well so it was not like a monologue but something you all did.

- yes, and we also made activities e.g. we were asked several questions and in between we have to stand on an imaginary line between a plus and a minus point. Our position indicated our opinion towards these questions

So also a lot of movement huh? About the tasks: were they challenging for you so you had to think about certain things a bit more before taking action or was it more like "I've heard this so many times before..." and so on?

- I think every discussion has something new in it and there were many things I remember quite well which can apply to my work in my country

I see.. let's talk a bit about the information delivered in this meeting, do you think you knew most of it before or did you learn most of it during the lesson?

- well most things I knew before because I work in NGO since 10 years and I organize seminars since about 8 years but anyways, any new information is valuable and I try not to forget it

Very good. What conclusions did you draw in this workshop?

- well there is one pessimistic

Pessimistic?

- yes: volunteering is not that easy!

Could you be a little more specific?

- yes, I was thinking about volunteering in the cities or towns and in the countrysides, it's very different and if you talk about it like we did today it becomes even more different e. g. if you ask a person in the city about voluntary work, he or she would say "yes I know that!" but if you ask somebody in the countryside you hear "I know, but what do you need it for?" or "why are you doing that? You could do paid work! Why working without gaining money?" That is so far the most striking difference we found out in this workshop. I think this is a good topic to discuss and think about. Maybe this could even be a topic for another workshop: the differences between rural and urban areas.

Yes good point.. In order to come to a conclusion: what does your personal resume look like when you look back on the workshop now? What do you think about it, was it constructive for you?

- yes definitely. I take some new information, some new viewpoints, some experiences, I met new people with new ideas, it was very exciting during the discussions. All in all there are many things I can use in my work back home, because many problems which were discussed are very similar to problems we have in Moldova, so it was very useful!

Thanks a lot!