One thing that I did during my voluntary service and I am really proud of is a series of psychological workshops for young people in Zagreb. Me and two other volunteers, Anna and Marina that are studying psychology, we started from the idea that we can practice our theoretical knowledge experiencing something new for our self and giving knowledge to the local community. It was a win – win situation.
The series of psychology workshops named ”Meeting with yourself” were divided into two parts. Six of them happened before Christmas and they lasted for three hours each and one longer weekend workshop lasting for six hours letting the participants have more time to feel safe, to get to trust each other so they can open up and get into longer discussions.
The main goal of the workshops was thru different activities to turn your attention from the outside world to yourself, to give yourself time to get to know yourself better, to understand why are you acting in certain way in some situations and to improve your communication skills, to practise assertive speaking, to see and solve some of your deeper inner conflicts.
The target group of this project were the young people living in Zagreb, no matter if they are local or not. So at the end we had mixture of half Croatians and half EVS volunteers, which was good opportunity that we used to expand foreigners social circle including local youngsters and Croatian youngsters used this meetings to gather more information on what is Erasmus+ and how they can use the opportunities. On every workshop attended six to eight people so in total we involved more than 30 youngsters.
The topics were different including stereotypes and judging ; self-confidence and self-esteem; roles that we play in real life; human relations based on trust, giving and receiving; end of the year workshop including wrapping up all that happened during the year, situations or emotions we want to leave behind and release from something that is still keeping us from continuing free; relationships, conflict resolution and communication. In all of them were used all kind of non-formal educational methods as role play, silent discussion, methods for assertive communication, psychodrama psychotherapy and Gestalt therapy.
It was all new and challenging experience to me, it gave me a chance to practice the role of psychotherapist, to notice my strong and weak sides and to practice patience and project management having long meetings with the girls on what to do and how to do it better than the previous one.
my EVS story 