V4H (Part III) Preparation

To finish the week let’s look at all the work that had to be made before for this training course to happen.

To tell the truth, the preparation stage started already just after the New Years – more than half a year before. As everything, it started with meetings and discussions of what needs to be done, who will do what and how are we going to make it happen.

As the project included a lot of countries that are not in the EU we needed to check who of them will need visas, how to get them, what are the procedures and of course prices. It was interesting to call the embassies, find out that some countries don’t have the Portuguese embassy in the country and that another embassy is responsible and once again call and try to explain everything.

However, it was just first of all the tasks we needed to do. We still needed to take care of accommodation, training room and a great place to eat. Of course, our target was to have all the places close enough that participants wouldn’t need to spend a lot of time just getting from one place to another. With magical powers of Cintia and others of Juventude we made it possible!

So finally, we got to the last preparation stage just weeks before the project started. We had to buy all the materials, food for the coffee breaks and prepare GNRation. It was so funny to do the shopping for the coffee breaks. We had a shopping list of what more or less we will need and of course we bought more. We had just one cart full of water not counting other stuff. What is more, we needed to go to different shopping centers to get everything, because we had some special cases – NO gluten and NO sugar girls. When in the second shopping center we forgot to ask for the invoice so we needed to come back, and when the address was wrong so we reached the point when we were singing and dancing next to the cashier waiting for a miracle to happen.

The last day of preparations was even crazier. We already had some participants in Braga, but nothing ready. We just had time to leave everything in GNRation, but not prepare the rooms. In the hotel we still needed to leave the list and when we had some presents, but we didn’t know when to give them. So we went to the hotel and of course the list of participants was wrong and one person was written twice. Then we decided to leave all the presents in the rooms, but not all the rooms were already ready. So we prepared everything in one room and then with the help of cleaning ladies we made it happen.

The only part was missing the preparation of GNRation, but we also managed to make it in time. Hotel was so helpful that they were even sending some of the participants straight to GNRation even if there was no need, but we met some of the participants in advance. By the way, while doing all the preparations we also needed from time to time, go and grab someone from the bus station.  

But I think we made it well and we made it happen. I was a lot of hard work, but in the end we managed also to have fun. We had a great team and sometimes all you need is just some people like you!

Gi