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Hello everyone!
This week, my volunteering for Smokinya comes to an end. In a few hours, I will leave Mrachenik, the village that has been home during the last 6 months. Then, I will start my way back to Spain.
But, before leaving, it’s time to reflect. To reflect on what I took from Smokinya and what I did for it. To reflect on which realisations I am bringing back home. To reflect on what I could have done better. It’s what we call the final evaluation.
But it’s not the first time you read me reflecting on this. I already did a mid-term evaluation two months ago. In that moment, my conclusion was that I was rapidly improving many personal skills: coachability, self-confidence, flexibility… The conclusion was that it had been a time full of challenges and growth, which is exactly what I came for.
Two months later, I can assure you something: all that I wrote there is still valid. I kept on training those same skills, and I also keep on facing challenges very often. This makes me satisfied and alligned with my life goals, as it was exactly what I was looking for when I applied to come here.
How do I feel about leaving?
But then, if I am happy and satisfied here, why should I leave? That’s a question I asked myself during the last days, when uncertainty, melancholy and sadness grew as the farewell day approached. And, in fact, it’s quite a reasonable question: if I wanted, the ESC program would allow me to stay at least until the end of the year.
But, just as much as I am satisfied and happy of my time here, I am also convinced that it’s time to go. I feel like I have already experienced and learnt all I had to take from this opportunity. There’s only one scenario where I would decide to extend my volunteering: to be team member in new youth exchanges, training courses or youth camps. However, that’s not an option, since 2025 camps season for Smokinya is finished now, and there’s nothing on the calendar until next year.
How do I feel about the future?
So with this feeling of completeness and satisfaction is how I am going to leave Mrachenik. But also with the expectation of taking a blank page and start drafting the new chapter for my life. It’s a future that makes me feel generally optimistic, but also anxious or uncertain from time to time.
What do I know about this future starting tomorrow? Not much, honestly. Only that I will look again to challenge myself. Maybe this time it will not mean living in an isolated village in rural Bulgaria. Or not even living abroad. But I will for sure look for ways to challenge myself just as I did here with Smokinya, because self-improvement and personal development is something that motivates me very deeply at this point of life.
The only thing I know is that I will be very happy to come back next year with Smokinya as team member for the camp or any other project. I always think about how thrilling it will be to come back in a few years and get impressed by the changes in the school, meet again the villagers and see how the children of my friends have grown.
Bright Future: the reward of leaving an impact
But, now, let’s forget about the future and focus on the present. Last week, I finished my participation on the flagship event of Smokinya: Bright Future. For the fourth time in three years, 30 young adults from around Europe gathered in Mrachenik with a common goal: rebuilding the school and bringing life back to the village.
As part of the organization team, I had two main roles. The first role was the materials & tools responsible, which involved centralizing all materials requests, keeping track on what we have and what we need, and supervising the proper use and storage of our tools. Then, the second role was to be a team leader, which meant leading groups of 3-10 young adults throughout the work tasks, mainly in the construction and gardening areas.
As a whole, the Bright Future experience was demanding and intense. It is the result of working in a faced-pace environment, when you need to adapt fast to changes and deal with a great level of uncertainty. That’s how I got to train my adaptability and flexibility one more time in this project.
But, at the same time, it’s been incredibly rewarding and joyful, much more than I expected. It was like this every time I realised that my energy and commitment was having a real impact on participants. For example, every time they came to tell me which challenge they were adopting from my digital disconnection workshop. Or just with the smiles of the villagers watching with joy how we were bringing real improvement to the village.
Successful leadership
Coming back to the skills, I believe that Bright Future was a playground to train my leadership. At the start of every single day, I would be given a task and a group of participants to make it happen. As a team leader, I was very aware that participants were in a learning environment, not in a professional one. Therefore, my focus was on providing a learning-by-doing experience without losing track on accountability and deadlines.
That’s why my leadership approach was to provide learning opportunities for participants to challenge themselves. How? Asking the right questions instead of solving the problems for them. Finding the questions that would lead them to the realisations they were looking for. Asking them what tools they needed instead of bringing them myself. Inviting them to reach agreements about breaks or music choice instead of micro-managing. At the end of the day, they were supposed to be the main characters of the movie, not me. I would just be in the shadow to provide the most convenient context for their growth and personal development.
But being a team leader was not only that. It was also about dealing with lack of motivation when the sun was hitting hard. That’s when I made use of gamification. For example, my team would not spend 3 hours collecting litter under the sun: they would be invited to a treasure hunt game through the village. In pairs, they would be asked to complete a map of the village with some secret locations for them to guess what they were, at the same time they pick litter.
Effective communication
But leadership is not the only skill I have improved: it’s also communication. During the whole month of the camp, I had many chances to talk in front of the group for many different purposes: leading a tour through the village, facilitating a reflection, opening a farewell ceremony… From this great variety of contexts and purposes, I learned how to adapt my tone, rhythm and communicative style to the communicational needs. Sometimes you are willing to bring joy and motivation to the group, so it’s time for jokes and irony. However, there’s other times when you are inviting to a solemn reflection, so a slower rhythm and big silences in between are required.
Nonetheless, communication skills were not only involved within participants, but also within the team. Here, I learnt that, when you verbalize something that you are visualizing on your mind, there’s a high chance for ambiguity. Why? Because those details that are evident for you and take for granted can be totally mysterious for the people around you. That’s why, after more than one (or two) miscommunications with my team, I started to be more aware of this risk, which allowed me to reduce it.
Space for improvement
Anyway, I don’t want to finish this self-assessment without pointing out what I could have done better. And there’s something that comes to my mind straightforward: learning Bulgarian. I must admit I could have taken much more advantage of our weekly Bulgarian lessons. I failed to allocate the time that learning such a complex language requires.
As a result, my Bulgarian level is quite poor compared to what it could be. It’s something that makes me sad, specially when I believe how helpful it would have been for Smokinya. Why? Because one of our core goals is to strengthen links and connections with the local community. However, it’s definitely harder to be welcome by villagers if the visible face of Smokinya failed to learn the language.
But that’s not all. I also believe I missed a chance to adopt a more active lifestyle. The environment in Mrachenik definitely makes it easier to go on a hike, sleep outside or ride the bike to watch the sunset. However, after 6 months, my daytime could be much more active than it is. That’s a challenge I want to face in the near future by joining some team sport.
And last, but not least, I want to talk about commitment. After 6 months with Smokinya, I realize that my commitment with the project during the first half of the duration was not as high as it could have been. There was some point between May and June when I started to connect much deeper with the vision, purpose and goals of the foundation. The best moments were when we realized that our effort and dedication was not in vain: with every successful local event, with every greatful villager, with every joyful participant… As a result, my motivation boosted, and I found myself suddenly willing to put much more time and energy into it.
My contribution
That leads me to the very final question of my evaluation: what was my contribution for Smokinya? I’ve been talking very extensively on what I took: learnings, realisations, experiences… But what did I give?
First, I contributed with my ability to work hard for long periods of time. That was definitely key during the whole Bright Future project, which felt like a marathon for the team members. My full commitment and deep motivation allowed me to keep an intense work level throughout the whole month, which help building a great experience for our participants. Besides, I also want to mention my flexibility and adaptability. Most of the times, the work environment with Smokinya was rapidly changing, but I was able to learn fast and do the best with what we had in each moment.
In addition, I’m also quite sure that my great communication skills were a valuable contribution for the foundation. I hosted two Smokinya clubs where we got really good feedback from participants, meaning that they had a great time with us. But also, my video editing proficiency combined with my willingness to be in front of the camera helped to provide engaging content for our social media.
Finally, I believe my organized mindset was also helpful. If there’s something I hate is spending time looking for that tool, material or digital file. As a result, I believe that every task I developed provided organization and clearness all around, as I would try to improve the status-quo as much as possible just to make us more efficient. Also, my years of experience working in office environments, mainly in engineering, definitely helped us with the office tasks from the foundation. I’m convinced that, most of the times, I delivered high-quality outputs with clearness, completeness and within deadlines.
Carlos
This program is co-funded by the European Solidarity Corps program of the European Union.
Финансирано от Европейския съюз. Изразените възгледи и мнения обаче принадлежат изцяло на техния(ите) автор(и) и не отразяват непременно възгледите и мненията на Европейския съюз или на Европейската изпълнителна агенция за образование и култура (EACEA). За тях не носи отговорност нито Европейският съюз, нито EACEA.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
