Türkçe
Italian volunteer Ilaria Beatrice completed her 8-month service in Sarajevo within our European Solidarity Corps Humanitarian Aid project “HAND”, funded by the European Commission and coordinated by EPEKA, supported by our Irish partner Viatores Christi Company Limited by Guarantee (VC) and hosted by our Bosnian partner Bosnian Representative Association for Valuable Opportunities (BRAVO).
During her volunteering, Ilaria took mainly three tasks: IOM camp support staff; Communication task; Project writing workshop.
At IOM, Ilaria mainly participated in SOCIAL and WASH focal points. Since the volunteers were the support staff, she had rotation and on need tasks. In SOCIAL CORNER, the main goal was to reset a human focused way of perceiving people, and she mainly participated in the activities about sewing (project from NoNation Fashion about developing skills into clothes creation) and dancing (important cultural stone in most of middle eastern and north African cultures). Creating their own clothes gave them the possibility to, finally, they were able to express their creativity and chose for themselves how they wanted to be seen.
WASH activities consisted mainly of getting people to clean the ‘’bedrooms’’ and garden in the camp. Her approach was that of respecting personal space. For as far as linguistic barriers allow, there was also an intention to let people feel the need to create a personal hygiene routine.
Ilaria took tasks on projects writing about youth. She did the context analysis and work packages. Therefore, she read and learned about Bosnian youth situation.
Through her listening attitude, the beneficiary group in the camp felt comfortable to share with her their issues, even though they didn’t speak the same language. So she usually spent a lot of time listening to the people talking to her in Arabic or Farsi, and they managed to understand each other. Her enthusiastic and caring attitude brought a different way to handle small issues to the camp, and the beneficiaries always felt comfortable when she was in the shifts. We would like to thank Ilaria for all her dedication in her work during her activity.
