EVS for mental health - My August month in Minte Forte

Lately I started my personal projects and this start was pretty hard for me because at first I had no ideas. After some brainstorming, I generated a few ideas and I can launch myself into implementing them, with the help of Paula. I decided to try and create the following projects:  French conversation club for young people, Sports for children, First Aid workshop for anybody who is interested to learn this. Nothing very concrete yet, nothing stable, just ideas for now.

The next steps will be to contact some schools and organizations and try to make these projects for their children. We will also contact the scouts to offer them the first aid skills workshop. These projects rejoice me because they reunite the things that I love and that interest me the most. Working with children and sharing what I know with them is really interesting for me.

My work in the psychiatric hospital for children goes well. It’s always interesting to see young people with various problems and also to see them evolve despite of these problems. Children and adolescents in the hospital change regularly, but some of them have bigger problems so they have to stay longer in the hospital and I can see vast changes in many of them after a while. During our visits some of them were unable to speak or they repeat the same things, others cannot do an entire activity or both. So it is very interesting to see that after some time they get out of that bad states and after a few weeks I can have a "long" conversation with them if they speak English or a "short" one if they only speak Romanian, but the most important thing is that they can have more coherent conversations.

Also, just participating in the activities is really gratifying for me. It's really sad to meet the children in these conditions, when they are lost, unable to speak or otherwise, but their developments give me great hope and make me happy. Children and teenagers are always very happy when me and Simon come to visit them, because I think these visits change their mood and help them have a good time. At each end of activity at Rubiklub at least one child comes and just gives me a hug and tells me ‘’thank you’’ and that's all the reward I need. It’s these small intentions that make me know that my visits have not been in vain and that I gave them something to smile for with a few activities. It's always emotional to go to the hospital, but there are days when this is obviously more pronounced. It's always touching to meet new children and teenagers and to help them for two short hours to think about things other than their problems, sometimes only through conversation, depending on their needs and desires. Rubiklub is always a good time and I hope it will stay this way.

Generally, I enjoyed these last days in Cluj because the heat is down again so it’s really nice to go out in the afternoon. It is more enjoyable for me that sometimes it’s cold because I love the cold! It is three months now that I'm in Cluj and I have my haunts my little habits. I started slowly but surely to make new acquaintances here, which is really good. Cluj is lovely, it has very nice places where you can go for a walk or even go for a coffee in town, not necessarily regularly but when I go, it’s always nice.