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ESC VOLUNTEERING EXPERIENCE IN GERMANY – MARIA

Hello, my name is Maria Chițea. I’m 23 years old and I come from Brașov, Romania. I got to be a volunteer in ESC last year and it was a nice and fun experience. I volunteered in a Sports oriented Kindergarten in a town in Germany, called Potsdam. At first, I didn’t really know what to expect, cause it was a very new experience for me to work with kids and also in a country, away from my family and friends. The city itself, wasn’t new to me, because I visited already a few years back, and I loved it.


The kindergarten ” Schulplatz 1″, where I volunteered, was a small one, with only 57 kids. So there were only 3 groups of kids with ages 2-6 year old. I got to work at first with 4-5 year old children. Slowly, I got to know every group of kids and I enjoyed that. At first, I found it a bit difficult to connect with the kids, because I didn’t really know how to do it and what to do to get them to like me. But slowly, I became their friend and started to be seen as a play partner, whom they can trust.

Not only was I a play partner, I had a lot of other thinks to do, such as to help the teachers to organize fun activities for the kids (ex. games, reading activities, making fruit salads, doing massages with massage balls/ tools etc.). Another task of mine was to support the kids during lunch and snack time and also during nap time.

In a year, I got really close to my group of kids and I learned so much about them. I also got to attend a sport event made especially for kids, where they could show their abilities (how fast they are, how responsive they are, to show up for their teammates…). This event made me think, that I actually enjoy being surrounded by them and would like to start a career as a kindergarten teacher. So I decided to do exactly that and I’m happy about that.

So, I can totally say, that this project was eye-opening for me and showed me that I needed to work with kids to be truly happy. I’m very thankful for everyone I met during this amazing project, including my teachers, the other volunteers ( who I met at the seminars along the way and also my roommates), and my mentors. I recommend to everyone to do such a project.

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