Pułtusk is
usually a quiet little town but for some time it turned into a lively place
with many programmes and a lot of people hanging around. During St Matthew Days
the market square turns into a place of a festival with a huge stage, many trampolines
and other facilities for kids to play.
Our part in this celebration started a couple of weeks before, when we started
to plan what kind of activities we could carry out. Then, we decided to invite
the new volunteers from SPW in Warsaw
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| Testing games was the funniest part of the preparation |
We had a final preparation
meeting At SPW office on Friday where we looked through the whole plan once
again and also collected some more international games. After having awesome
pierogi prepared by Gosia we joined the EVS Hotspot. It was an event organized
by ex-EVS volunteers and the National Agency. We took part in a debate about
the needs of young people and after a little break, we had an international
evening concentrated on dances and songs. Unfortunately, we had to leave early
as we did not want to miss our bus to Pułtusk.
On Saturday, after finalizing everything, we decided to surprise Sylwia for her
birthday. Our version of ‘Sto, lat, sto lat’ was not the best one but seeing
our finally 18 years old coordinator happy was worth it. Afterwards, it was
time to go to the market square as the parade was about to start.
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| Our team of international volunteers at the parade |
All schools,
institutions and organizations of Pułtusk represented themselves and we took a
walk around the square. We prepared with T-shirts, flags and some face
painting. Some of us only had a little flag on the face, while some turned into
cats and tigers. We reached our goal: we catched the attention of people. We also spent
our free time actively. Cooking and playing fun games together were initial
parts of our days.
The next day, the market square became a huge fair with schools, institutions
and organizations presenting themselves at their own stands. Our stand was
common with the Social Care Centre (MOPS).
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| When the person standing in the front turns around the others have to freeze, The winner the one who touches the wall first. |
The tent was divided into zones.
There was one for information about the two organizations, one for toys, books
and home decoration exchange and at last but not least the unplugged zone. There the idea was to show young people ways of spending their free time without computers and TV. We had a lot of games inside and outside the tent and some music, as well. Face painting was also very popular.
Bubble-making was also one of the favourite activities, besides zośka and badminton. At the tables kids could play cards, board games and Korean game called gonggi. The volunteers were divided into two shifts and we also had two Polish helpers, Gosia and Adrian. We were happy to see that many children came to play with us and some of them stayed there almost the whole day. I was lucky enough to meet some of my little friends from the time of the workcamps in July.
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| Zośka is flying high. |
Now it is time to say a bigbigbig THANK YOU for everybody who somehow helped in
making this happen, it was a really great weekend! J
What have I learned?
New games, how to survive an active Sunday with a little sleep the night
before, how to motivate young people to spend their time in a more playful way,
how to fight with the wind that is trying to destroy the tent and also ways of
effective communication and exchanging ideas to cooperate with others.
Impact on local community
Thanks to these events more and more people got to know that this organization
exists and I hope to see people being interested in our activities. It was a
really good way to spread information and to get attention.
Zsófi
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