When do you think to have time for doing your volunteering?!

 

It is used to be never a question for the volunteers from the Cruz Vermelha Portuguesa. Volunteering it is the way the volunteers give their hours of work to help people without expecting anything in return and in Braga we can see a large number of young people doing that.

 

I have to say some words about my volunteering here and to spread some information about the idea of a charity shop (or resale shop) where I have my volunteering. This is a charity shop and it calls Ponto Vermelho.

 

This shop was made mostly for people who are needy, people who can’t buy so far expensive clothes as it is in the shopping malls. Charity shops sell mainly goods donated by people. But in this shop we also can find some buyers that don’t want to spend a lot of money buying clothes. So here they can buy many things without spending a fortune.     

 

Imagine, www. says there are 323 charity shops across the Great Britain. I don’t know this statistics in Portugal but I think that they are important, especially for those that needy.

 

This social shop it is developed for those who live below the poverty line and for communities of people who have particular problems and social needs for example, like Roma people do.  I believe Roma people in Portugal and this will be my next message for this blog.

For now I say bye to you!

 By: Victoria Zaitseva  

 

Starting our project at Juventude

Cruz Vermelha in Braga

Finally the 4 volunteers are together in Braga. We started our volunteer service some weeks ago: Fatih from Turkey, Manuel from Spain, Philipp and Victoria from Ukraine. So we are going to tell you the story of our volunteering and life experience in Braga. Every month you can find in this blog more information about our EVS experience.

In one activity of the project MAIS ATITUDE.

                                                                                             Walking in the city of Braga.

   

       Dinner after hard work in Prado.

  

Juventude da Cruz Vermelha is a local department of Red Cross and a main place where we do our volunteer service. Now it's important to tell you more about the places and projects with which we collaborate every single day. 

Two of us work in social shop “Ponto Vermelho”.

Ponto is aimed to provide people in need clothes and all necessary things for house. The money for clothes goes as a donation to support local projects of Red Cross. All the goods for sale the shop receive as a donation from people and companies. Obviously, everyday it is needed to maintain all the stock management, items management and client service in a shop. So, these are activities that 2 of us are involved in.

           Other two people of our team work in the Centro Comunitário of Prado.

Prado is a small village not far away from Braga.

Here we help to organize the leisure time of kids, mostly from gypsy families. The welfare of their families is not high and children need to spend time not on the street, but with their peers. 

The variety of activities is really wide: we do canoeing with children, play handball, football, and badminton or go camping to the forest.

By: Philipp Lytvynov 

On-Arrival Training in Almada

We stayed 5 night and 6 in Lisbon.

The Portugal national agency was set all information about what I'll need here in Portugal.

First and second day,we just talked about our projects and what we do at the organizations, with other volunteers.

Those day I saw I'm really Lucky,because some of volunteers had a some problem with organization and projects. But i didn't see any problem on my project:-). I'm really happy with this training because I meet I lot volunteer around the Europe(Italy, Germany,Poland,cek republic,Greece,Spain and Peru).

We saw all popular destination in Lisbon, and visited a vine factory, cheese farm, and ceramic art center. And we listen some story about Portugal history. I also saw ocean first time and swim:-).

I must say "thank you" to the Portugal national agency! 

By Fatih Karamanoglu