My first ESC volunteer experience with the NGO SFERA Macedonia and the project “Upgrade your neighborhood—Brand your city” was a very nice and valuable one for me. The project itself was mainly about creating some positive social impact on the local society, in particular in one neighborhood of Bitola named Karposh.

I was working on this project in October 2018 along with my two fellow volunteers. We started by surveying young people in Karposh, aged 14–20, about their opinion of their neighborhood, if there is anything that they would like to change, and what activities they would like to have organized for them. It was the first time I made a survey, and it went well since we had our first results very soon.

The most popular activity of the survey proved to be the making of a movie screening, and I was happy to organize it as my project. The screening was made in the neighborhood of Karposh, particularly at Kole Kaninski Elementary School, for the students of the 8th and 9th grades as part of a biology class, and it was about the environment and sustainability. It was a very successful cooperation between the school and the teachers. The students seemed interested, and many of them came after the end of the movie to ask questions about ESC opportunities.

Being part of SFERAMacedonia was a pretty busy experience in many other ways too.

I need to mention the “Art Attack” workshop that I was assisting with. We decided to have a DIY kite-making workshop since the following day there was SFERA’s kite-flying event. It was so much fun getting prepared for this event, buying all the colorful materials, and then actually making all those kites with the people who were part of it. Of course, the following day, when we took all our kites to a hill nearby and tried to fly them, that was super fun too. To be honest, I hadn’t done that since I was a child, and I got enthusiastic about it!

Another event that we made happen was an intercultural night on the premises of our office. We brought the groceries; we even brought local specialties from our home countries beforehand, and we cooked all day long to get prepared for the large crowd that visited us.

As a volunteer, I was also doing some office work, preparing event posters or some necessary documents, and I had regular meetings with my fellow volunteers and our coordinator and mentor.

Last, I was representing NGO SFERA Macedonia together with my colleagues during different events, such as the European Cooperation Day and the NGO Fair in Bitola (2/10/18), a school presentation about voluntarism in Europe (4/10/2018), the Municipality of Bitola’s Voluntarism event, and the general meeting of Bitola’s NGOs (16/10/18).

I certainly shouldn’t forget the Macedonian language classes we had every week that were not only helpful for my everyday life in Bitola but also very interesting in the sense that it was the first time for me to study the Cyrillic alphabet.

In general, this voluntary experience of mine was super amazing, and I would like to personally thank Milcho, Kate, Mende, and my lovely mentor Valerija for making me part of their team, for their professional and at the same time friendly attitude, and for this nice month of my life.

I would suggest SFERA Macedonia to anyone looking for a nice ESC opportunity!