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The last transnational meeting of the STEP1 project took place between 16-17 November in Poland. The main objective of the meeting was to discuss the implemented activities, as well as the final results of the project. The meeting was attended by representatives of the Portuguese associations, Spanish and Greek partner organisations, our own team and the Polish partner, who also hosted us this time. 

The primary objective of the project was to increase the number of local volunteers and to involve and prepare young people for volunteering. For our part, we can say that during the 24-month term, we involved 242 young people in the project at local level, organized 4 events dedicated to the project, which was about promoting local volunteering opportunities, enriched our team with 7 local volunteers, thanks to which we currently count 28 local volunteers. The last local event of the project will be organised at the end of this month, on this event we would like to present the results of the project to the local community.  

At the same time, near the presentations, we had the opportunity to take part in a snowy trip in, the majority of the team visited the Samotnia peak, the weather was foggy, but the fresh mountain air was refreshing for us.  

The project was supported by the Portuguese National Agency under Erasmus+ Youth in Action. Associations involved in the project: Just Do It (Poland), You in Europe (Greece), Imagina (Spain), Casa da Juventude de Amarante (Portugal), initiated by Psíentifica (Portugal). 

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First, there were five, then there were four – now there are five again, still counting though.


At the beginning of our 10-month volunteering experience, there were 5 of us young folk from all over Europe. We had Nerea and Abril from Spain, Timotej from Slovakia, Quentin from France, and Jaanus from Estonia. We were a colourful little group. All motivated and ready to work. During our first days, we visited many places and many people we would work with work at in the future. Unfortunately, a 10-months long volunteering period could be challenging, especially for those who never lived in any other place, but at home. A few days passes, and it became clear, that our youngest volunteer, Abril, was not ready for such a big change. Eve her motivation could not overcome her homesickness. In the end, she went back to Spain. The rest of us continued our daily lives here, sort of forming 2 teams.

Timotej and Nerea were one of these dynamic duos, helping out in the local kindergarten and disabled centre. They love working with kids, and the kids seem to love working and playing with them. And I would say the same when it comes to young adults with special needs. Of course, time will tell, but I am optimistic. And I feel like, working with these amazing young adults might be challenging, but it is incredibly rewarding.

Timotej is a young volunteer from a small village near Košice in Slovakia. He came here, to Cristuru Secuiesc, because he wanted to see new places and meet new people. He always liked to help others and improve the world we live in little by little. He is motivated and hopes that he can be at least a little help in the life of the community.


Nerea flew all the way from Spain to a wintery Romania in order to become a volunteer here at ATA. She enjoys singing, learning new skills, discovering new places, and loves working with others. This might be the secret to why she is so good with kids. She is motivated to learn some Hungarian and Romanian. So please, feel free to say hi to her at the market.

Quentin and Jaanus however spent most of their time helping the local herbalist lady, Naomi, with different activities such as, for example, wildberry picking. Spending time in nature is quite calming, and seeing the surroundings change, the transition from green to orange, brown, and red is beautiful. It almost made up for the lack of cinema in the town. I honestly cannot wait for the first snow, and yes, I know it is a bit early for that, but still. One can dream!


Now, Quentin arrived here from France, Lyon to be more exact, and arrived to make the community’s life a bit more colourful. He loves learning about other cultures, and he wants to discover Transylvania while living here. A volunteer who aims to discover, we love to see it! In his spare time, he enjoys a good movie night and some quality music.

The next volunteer, Jaanus, enjoys spending his time in nature. However, he is a bit scared to get lost, so if you come across a lost Estonian from Tallinn, please point him in the direction of our office. We hope to finish the program with no volunteers lost in the forest. Other than spending time outside, he is motivated to see as much of our country as possible. He is ready to experience a new and different culture, and with this, improve himself.


All 4 of us have been to a few classes at school, in order to meet and greet the students. Getting to know the kids is something that is challenging at first but seeing them grow and learn different things always makes me smile. Helping the next generation to reach their full potential is a challenge I would gladly take on!

Also, we have helped out in the local library, either carrying books or helping them with the story-therapy session. Sometimes it is nice to spend time at a quiet place, just a little break from the noisy weekdays. And of course, how wouldn’t love to help the lovely librarian lady? Truly a sweetheart.

One of the most fun activities, at least so far, has been harvesting grapes at a local vineyard in Cristuru Secuiesc. Quentin, Timotej, and Jaanus partook in this activity, and they all had a great time.

On a positive note, we didn’t stay as four, but a new fifth international volunteer arrived just last Tuesday the 18th of October. Javier is our newest volunteer, who also came from Spain. So far, he has already been to the kindergarten, the library, the herbalist, etc. I would say he gets along with the kids quite well, so I remain optimistic.

Javier is the fifth volunteer at the organization. He also moved here from the other end of the continent, from Spain. He wants to experience something new while also helping others. By volunteering, he can both help and develop himself, learn new skills and have some fresh air. Moreover, he is looking forward to learn about the language, the food, and the traditions in this area.


Additionally, four of the volunteers, everyone except Jaanus, also helped out organizing a concert here in Cristuru Secuisec last Friday that began6 PMM. So far it seems that everybody is enjoying their time here and are more than happy to help out the local community in any way possible.

From all of us international volunteers working here with ATA, we wish you all the best!
Cheers to an epic 10-month adventure with all of you!

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In the beginning of October, between 5-8th I participated on the 3rd seminar of Digitools project, organized in Lefkada, Greece. 


On Tuesday, at 6 oclock in the very morning we flew from Cluj with changing in Viena to Athens, from where we took the bus, and after another 6 hours of travelling we finally arrived to Lefkada. After we occupied our accomodation, we could take a rest and discover a little bit the surrounding and meet the new and also familiar faces. 

The next day, after breakfast and coffee we started the seminar with introduction games, in order to get to know each other a bit better, at least to learn the names. Teams were from Greece, Italy, Martinique and Romania, with 5 representatives in each team. After the games, the project facilitator presented to us what the seminar would be about, what our task would it be, how to do a tutorial video for the user, the features of an application from the user point of view. At the end of the day we participated on the intercultural event, where we, as teams presented our specific food, snacks, drinks, which we tasted of course. Then we learned new Greek, Italian, French style dances too.

Thursday was a boat tripping day around the Lefkada island, we also got some information about the island, thanks to the nice weather, we also had the chance to swim in two different places. 


On the next day, Friday, charged fully we continued with the program, we formed mixed, intercultural teams. As a team we were brainstorming, everyone shared their ideas about the platform and the tutorial video, what would work the most. Then we split the different phases of the tasks among us, some of us wrote the script for the tutorial, others did screenshot videos about the steps of the feature we wanted to show, recorded the voiceover for the tutorial, then the last phase was the editing of the video, to put together all the material. After the seminar, we had some free time to walk around, discover little bit more the island. 

Final day, on Saturday we showed our tutorials, then in groups we analyzed and documented all the steps how we did the tutorials.  

As a final task, we formed into other mixed groups and together we got it through a questionnaire, where all of us told our opinion about the main goals of a youth associations, ideas for development, projects, opportunities. 


As the final part of the seminar, we got our certificate of attendance, and everyone could share their feelings, impressions about the whole seminar. I can say I felt inspired because of the place, and people, I got loads of ideas inspirations from the others. It was a really great experience for me. 

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With the season and the weather changing, things change in our association as well. We welcomed four amazing young individuals to our quiet little town. They are here to make our community’s life a bit more colorful. They arrived from different parts of Europe.



Nerea left behind the warmth of Spain and moved to the rainy Romania. She is curious about all things traditional. From France, we welcomed Quentin, who already received one very important task from us; figure out how to make giant bubbles! Timotej swapped out the Slovakian winter for a Romanian one. If you see a blond lost boy wandering around, please give some directions to the office for our Jaanus.

Upon arrival they were ready to work. They didn’t waste any time and helped with decorations for a local event. On Monday, they met the whole team at ATA. Afterwards, they met most of the people they will be working with during their 10 months in our beloved town.

There are two main activities they will work on. The first one is something called NGO Support. Sound so official, isn’t it? This activity is related to the everyday life of ATA. They will help with event organizations, workshops, youth mobilities, content creation, and small things around the office.




The second one is Inclusion Support. This is more about assisting our partner organizations who work with the disabled. All volunteers who join this program will have the chance to sing, dance, do crafts with the disabled people who will share their love in return. At the same time, volunteers can support kindergarten and elementary school teachers where they can organize non-formal English workshops for the children.

The new team already had the chance to meet the activity coordinators to learn more about the tasks they are going to be responsible for during their stay.

At the moment, they are just getting to know the culture, the town, the country, but we have no doubt that they will soon part of the local community. At the same time, not only they will learn during this time, but also us, as we will get an insight into their culture and they will enrich our work with their colorful ideas. We’re excited to get started with the next 10 months!

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The activities we prepared for the children allowed them to have a lot of fun. We colored the tent with ornaments we made from different types and colors of paper and cardboard. Each volunteer had a task at 7 different stations. Reading books, experimenting, face painting, they painted plastic plates with colorful paints, there was a corner with toys for babies.



Many parents brought their babies and we played games together in that corner. They had a lot of fun with Çofukkar balloon guns and water balloons. We painted many children’s faces at the face painting station and they all really enjoyed it. At the experimental station, they experimented with making bubbles with a simple plastic bottle, detergent, food coloring and socks. Many children had their photos taken in the photography section we prepared.



As volunteers, we made lemonade and offered it to everyone who attended. A lot of children came to the tent to have their faces painted because we distributed tickets at the festival area and encouraged the children to come to the tent. In fact, when they saw each other’s faces painted, they wanted to come, so the plug was not enough and we made many patterns. The children were very interested in the tent, we decorated the place with balloons, octopuses we made from paper, colored papers. This was quite interesting!



As volunteers, the whole team worked very devotedly to decorate the tent and organize the activities with the children. Coordinators helped with what non-English speaking children wanted. Parents seemed very happy that their children were spending time with such activities. The children with their faces painted wanted to take pictures with a few volunteers. We all had a pretty fun time. We reached our goal! I hope we can reach many children and make everything better by doing much more beautiful activities!

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 The past week has been about children and different cultures.   


Let’s start at the very beginning! In many cases, during our events we have heard from parents that they would be open to opportunities organized for children which would be about learning English and learning about new cultures. Since volunteers came to us for 2 months not long ago, we decided to organize a multicultural camp where children can not only practice English, but also learn about other cultures.    


In order to organize the camp, on a beautiful Tuesday in August, we moved out to Siklód with the children, so that we would not be disturbed by the noise of the town and the atmosphere of the camp would be more intimate in the heart of nature.  The program of the camp was compiled by international volunteers – there was a morning training, they could enjoy the Lithuanian games, they had an introduction to Turkey, and the children could also learn a lot about Ethiopia.   What none of the camps should miss is the water battle, which wasn’t in the program but seemed like a good idea.   


The kids had a lot of fun and took part in a lot of adventures during the 3 days. As for the English language or other cultures, several children surprised us, as they were completely open to international volunteers, spoke English well, were tolerant of the cultures of other countries.    

We hope that we can orgaize it next year, in the meantime, watch the video we made during the children’s camp. 

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Hello my name is Kürşat. I’m coming from Turkiye.I’m 20. I have been in Transylvania before and it was so good and I really wanted to come again and I have a chance to see again. Spending time with the children makes me excited always. When I see them happy I become happy.



We have a chance to work with the children so as a medical student it will improve myself too much. And my field of interest is camping and ıt’s so excited for me. This project is exactly for me. Cristuru secuiesc’s nature is perfect. The lakes, mountains,forests It’s like paradise. I’m so happy to be here.

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Hello,

My Name is Handan. 20 years old Turkish girl.
Today I would like to share my experiences and opinions about Erasmus+ and EVS(ESC) program. I will be in volunteering project in Romania for ATA until 17th September.



My Journey with them began when I was soon-to-be-19-year-old in Lithuania. And contuined with Spain then Romania. All of them gave me self-space to learn, develop New skills, being independent and make uniqe friends that I will never forget. 🤍

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The 36 month long Artability+ Strategic Partnership which is financed by the Erasmus+ Program is slowly but surely coming to an end. To celebrate this, all partners have organized dissemination and multiplier events to share the results of the project with a wider audience, not only to boast with the achievements of the project, which are quite a lot, but also to inspire entities in doing similar local, national or international initiatives in the future.

We organized our event in the Molnar Istvan Museum on the 5^th of August 2022. We invited 70 stakeholders from the larger region from 21 different entities (schools, associations, foundations, municipalities, the media, etc). Out of these, 54 registered and confirmed participation and 42 attended the 4 hour long event. Along with them we also had staff members, and disabled target groups attending who also shared their experiences.


During the dissemination event we focused on 4 of the main elements that came out of this project:

– the 3 stages of art labs done with more than 60 disabled people which created 72 tutorial videos
– the curricula to aid anyone wishing to empower disabled youth to become more self-sufficient through art
– the training course done for disabled young adults in Lugo, Spain, and
– the online, interactive exhibition of the 72 artworks created during the project.

All these can be found here.

During the event, the 18 artworks were also on display in the museum and in the snack break, attendees could also watch their tutorials.

With this we are almost finished with the project. We only need to translate the curricula that was created into our national languages and with that, all project activities are finished.

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Hello, I’m Deniz. I’m 22 years old. I live in Turkey. I am studying Computer Science and Engineering. I am currently in Romania and this is my first volunteering project. I am a warm and social person. I always try to add new and beautiful things to myself. It’s my first days on this project and it has already given me incredible experiences.



At Cristuru Secuiesc, we are in a very beautiful environment. We are working with my other volunteer friends and ATA employees to add good things to the world with purely good intentions. My English level and general culture level improved in a short time. If you really want to have a good time and gain experience, ATA is one of the best organizations you can find. Peace out ✌🏻