How would you define Youth Work, now that you’ve spent a year in Leszno?

I would define youth work as the activities that we deliver in a community working with young people, like kids and adolescents, to improve the situation in this community and help them to grow in different fields of their life.

 

What is the most challenging thing about working with Leszno Youth?

The groups of friends that are already created. They want to keep together, do activities together and sometimes it is difficult for new people to go into these groups. Also there are really different mentalities in groups of youth at the same age.

 

What improvement would you like to see in Fundacja CAT?

I would like to see Fundacja CAT growing, having more volunteers, working with more people and with more fundations around Leszno. I would find a way to update the website. Giving it an English version and a new look would be something really nice, and that probably would make all the information, and what we want to show, more clear.

 

Have you learned from this mobility in a way that it improved you?

If YES, can you share with us what ? Yes, I learned many things that improved myself in a personal, professional and social way. The most important things i would say are: - Improve my english - Learn how to teach a language - Learn how to work with teams, and also how to manage and coordinate teams. - Learn about administration workshop in a foundation - Learn how to communicate with another fundations around the world - Learn how to adapt to different situations/ cultures/ countries and how to survive with it

 

Which activity did you enjoy the most?

During my entire project, the activity that I enjoyed the most was the youth festival that we organized last summer, in the one i was coordinating the team and organizing the event. I also enjoyed the dungeons and dragons workshop that I created in the one we have 5 sessions and the same people come to any of them, creating a solid group.

 

Do you think that Youth Organizations such as Fundacja CAT are needed in small communities?

For sure the small communities need organizations like Fundacja CAT. Day by day you can feel the changes that are making in the community and in the life of the volunteers that are coming.

 

Where would you like to improve the work that we do or what suggestion would you like to leave with us? Well, fundacja CAT changed a lot in the last months, and i'm not really familiar with the working style that it has right now, but for example i would like to see new methods for recrutation of new volunteers. During my last months we were having problems finding long term volunteers and I think organizing a meeting to collect ideas about how to find more interested people would be a really nice idea. Also, i really feel so much comfortable managing my own schedules and my own task as I prefer, but I think this working style is not for everyone, and I saw situations this last moths like volunteers not going to the office and taking the day as holidays just because was nothing in the schedule, or people totally lost about what to do and how to do it. I think finding a way to have more clear schedules, more clear tasks and take a look at the working hours of the volunteers, would be better for all the volunteers, avoiding frustration moments and creating a different working atmosphere. Also I think that having good communication between the board and the volunteers is something really important in this kind of fundations.

 

How did you feel working in an NGO?

Really well, it's something that I have been thinking about doing for a long time, and I think I found my place here. I would like to keep working with different NGOs in the future.

 

What field of employment would you see yourself in?

I really like to work with people and I choose my studies for this, but also, i'm quite good in administration jobs. I would like to find my place in something in the middle.

 

Which other NGO or organisation in Leszno, would you like to give some credit to? (have you had the chance to meet some that impressed you or that you appreciate for being involved the way they are, in Leszno)

Well, because of my role in fundacja i didn't work so much with other fundations in Leszno, but i really liked to work with the crisis intervention center, and I think what they are doing is something really important for the society.