March

Ok.
We have to catch up. We didn't put any post for so long. Many things happened.
We've received a nice heater which helpped me to survive wet and cold winter.
Note for future volunteers: the winter here sucks! There is no central heating, houses are poorly isolated and all heat you produce runs away very fast. You'd better stay outside at the sun as much as you can. Thanks to this gift from our Portugueese teacher, I am able to write this at the moment.
Let's go back to March...
There was a Carnaval. We went with the kids to nerby town – Moncarapacho. Everybody said : “It is not so special ...they just have a little carnaval there...”
In Poland I don't celebrate carnaval in any way. Something different is always interesting for me. So I went to check and accompany kids.
What a big surpirise! The city centre was all closed for the traffic, on the streets gathered crowd of people in all ages. At the beginning we heard drums, then we saw youngsters marching and playing instruments. After a while came huge platform with dancing and smiling people on top. I took several pictures of the first five cars, later I gave up and stopped counting. There were too many. Come on, you said it was suppose to be a random, boring carnaval parade! Just take a look at the pictures.
During the event we also ate some portugueese doces – which are muito bom!
As I can recall it was a first day when I could wear T-shirt again. The spring has just started.

In addition MOJU organized its own Carnaval – MóCarnaval . In a rented Recreativo (the residence of the first NGO in Olhão ) played a popular local band . Theme for MOJU people was 'crazy 80.' Can you find our Neşe in this crowd?

 

foto by Carlos Filipe de Sousa

Unfortunatelly Nikola and Linda couldn't party too much because they were at the same time organising leader's meeting for incoming youth exchange.
Here they are busy at the office:

Also in March Linda presented her country – Austria or Österreich. Of course, main attraction was food. Many of the dishes she prepared for the first time in her life. Result was absolutely perfect! Just Portuguese people were afraid of poppyseed cake – at first they thought that it is a caviar cake. Here is the full menu:


Mohnstrudel
Sachertorte
Apfelstrudel
Linsen mit Speck und Semmelknödel and its vegetarian-no-pork version for Nese
Erdäpfelvogerlsalat mit Kernöl
Schnitzel

Stay tuned! 

In May we will put something from April ;-)

workshops workshops workshops

You never stop learning in life...
Under this motto we are participating in some workshops
and some of them are a lot of fun ;)

relaxing massage workshop

Even if it does not look like a dancing workshop in the first place, but still we needed to get the good food away from our hips again. First the joy than the work :)

Also who can say no to this delicious kitchen work??? 

active holidays

The weather, during the christmas holidays, was sunny and quite warm :D. So we decided to do some outdooractivities with the kids.

Two girls form Panteras, one of the two neighbourhoods where MOJU and we are working in, planned a litlle running competition through their neighbourhood.
In partnership with the ecoteca team and the team from museu Joao Luzio we had some interesting and creative workshops about the use of natural ressources. The youngsters learned about the natural colours (in fact we took for example coffee puder, flowers, curry puder, etc and draw some nice pictures). We also had workshops of how to make bathing salt and natural soap for cleaning dishes and clothes, without the use of any chemical ingridients.
After the workshops we enjoyed the warm weather and the sun on the little playground.

Christmas

This year we celebrated Christmas on the Portuguese way. Sea food, 15 degrees outside, a lot of sun, snowmen build out of carton and paper, no "Lebkuchen", cake contests, a Christmas theatre play. The Christmas party with the kids and their families started with a Christmas lunch and a dancing show. We met the parents of the kids with whom we are spending a lot of time. For the last weeks in December the children were working hard on their gorgeous theatre performance. We brought a little bit of our tradition by making our cookies and cakes for the best cake contest. Unfortunately we are not the best pastry makers so we didn't get the first price.

In the evening we were invited from our friend Marco to spend a traditional Portuguese Christmas with him and his lovely family. A sad message to the world... We ate all the seafood from the Atlantic ocean J Of course the holy bacalhão was the main dish and surrounded by shrimps, oysters and different kind of shells. We were really impressed by the hospitality and kindness of the Do Vale family. Afterwards we also visited other friends homes and partied until the morning.

We are thankful for having such good friends here whom created us a memory which we will remember forever.  

Hello!

In September 2013, MOJU - Associação Movimento Juvenil em Olhão became stronger and welcomed four new volunteers. We are Nese from Turkey, Ewelina from Poland, Linda from Austria and Nikola from Serbia. We started our voluntary service under the project VEhYcLE - Volunteering as an Engine (for social inclusion) of Young peopLE under the frame of Youth in Action Programe of European Commission.

All of us are living together in Olhão, a small but lively fishing city located on the south of Portugal in beautiful Ria Formosa lagoon. It has a nice old town, a vibrant fish market and wonderful long beaches on the nearby islands.

In spite of all these beauties, Olhão has a lack of opportunities for young people which leads to their social exclusion. Many youngsters are living in unstructured families struggling with economical difficulties. They are at risk of dropping out of school and future unemployment. This is the environment where Mais Sucesso project was implemented and where our EVS project was set. In the nice atmosphere of our social living room, youngsters can develop their creativity and ideas. Together with the experienced MOJU team, we give support on the implementation of several activities, such as, creative recycling workshops, thematic parties, English classes, playing sports, helping with homework and personal projects. During school breaks we help with the organization of summer camps and excursions to different parts of Portugal.

At international level, we are involved in all stages of MOJU projects’; from writing an application till the project implementation and reporting of youth exchanges and training courses. On the last deadline of the YiA Program we wrote a project for a bilateral youth exchange with our Polish partner, CIM Horyzonty, and recently it got approved by the Portuguese National Agency.

All in all, MOJU is a big family and now we are a part of it. We are glad to be here and to have the opportunity to learn more about youth work, the Portuguese language and culture. To sum up, we are enjoying our Portuguese and Olhanense life over here, but unfortunately the time is passing by too fast.

Nese, Ewelina, Linda and Nikola

MOJU EVS Volunteers