Ever since February of this year, I’ve been a volunteer at Tartu Noorsootöö Keskus, TNTK for short under the European Solidarity Corps program of Erasmus+. At this organization, my work has ranged from being a youth worker to an event organizer, to working with really young children or young adults, to being the person in charge of what is happening on a specific day, to helping my co-workers with what they have planned. It’s the kind of work that is different every single day, thus I can’t really say in just a few sentences how was my experience as one of two international volunteers at the organization. Nonetheless, after 7 months of working here, and with one month to go, I have a lot of material to expose my opinion.
TNTK gives its volunteers a lot of freedom throughout their work. We mostly work in the youth room, with the youngsters. On some days of the week, we work with youngsters aged 7 to 11, on others the work is with youngsters aged 12 to 19 (older sometimes). Both age groups bring a different kind of approach to the job, as we are presented with different challenges. With the younger ones, perhaps the best approach is to help them deal with the stimulus of the world: playing games; engaging in physical activities; having small conversations; teaching them new things. The way I see it, you match their energy, which can be tough as young kids can have copious amounts of energy, but such is necessary in this part of their development. Whereas the older age group is what I see as having brought me the most difficult moments. Teenagers are in such a phase where they are trying to understand the world around them and themselves, not always in the way that is the most approachable for exterior elements to “get in”. Furthermore, a lot of the youngsters I work with are at risk, whether it’s within their family, substance abuse or peer pressure. It gives a bigger dimension to the work, it’s not simply interacting with them, it’s about engaging with them as much as they let you in. As I said, we are not bound to a specific kind of approach (the freedom I mentioned), and as volunteers, we learn to discover the best way to do it, one that fits our own personality. We aren’t exactly the same as a youth worker, but we’re still an element in the youth room, almost like a joker card – you don’t know exactly what your purpose is, but both you and your co-workers discover throughout time and how you, as a volunteer can bring something new to the table.
With freedom also comes responsibility, as we are required to come up with an activity for each week. Something fun or educational or cultural, whatever we want, it’s totally up to us volunteers! It can be something we are comfortable with or something that is completely new to us and that we are also discovering at that precise moment. The only activity we are required to follow a specific “guideline” is the cooking club, but even there, the dishes are of our choice. To name a few examples, I’ve brough language workshops, traditional games of my own country, origami, scavenger hunts, quizzes, whatever I could think of that I felt I could accomplish (for the most times, sometimes I wasn’t even sure I would pull things off, but I can say that this thought quickly dissipates as soon as you enter “active mode”). The activities can be indoors or outdoors, they are not restricted to the youth center territory, as you can even bring the youngsters outside. It might be stressful to have this constant creative process in your mind, but it pays off in the end, who would have thought that I would ever see a Portuguese pão de ló being cooked by Estonian youngsters? Nobody puts any pressure in you, that doesn’t mean you can slack off though, it’s all about finding that balance and preparing yourself. And if I was ever in need of help, such was given to me.
The work at TNTK isn’t restricted to the youth room and the activities we plan, I also participated in city-wide events which the organization took part in. Some examples were the Children’s Day or most recently Tarkusepäev (Knowledge Day), where I would bring something to our tents. For example, creating a live-sized board game with a huge dice for the children to have fun with on Children’s Day. It felt bizarre to actually be creating something like that, but it just shows that we can do whatever we put our mind into… at least in this organization and with this kind of work. And speaking of Children’s Day, TNTK gave me the opportunity to coordinate everyone for this specific event. So, there I was, organizing meetings, leading things, making sure everything was working. It’s the kind of responsibility I wasn’t expecting of having but one that I certainly welcomed the moment it was proposed to me. It gave me insight into being the leader of a cultural project and the work that comes with it and how to deal with difficult issues that can arise from organizing such a project.
Having opened a small gap to the window that is working at TNTK, what else can I say? Volunteering here has been an experience that made me adapt to the kind of work I wasn’t aware of even being capable of doing. It opened my eyes to what are my possibilities, and how the world is much bigger than what we make it to be, or what I made it to be. Nearing the end of my project, I can say that I see things in a broader way essentially because of this opportunity I had, that allowed me to come to a country whose culture is a complete 180º turn from mine (while still feeling very European of course), to meet new people, either Estonian or foreigners like me, and to start a work that I found to be tougher in nature than what I initially envisioned but that has absolutely made me grow and adopt a new outlook on what can be essentially described as dealing with people.
