CHANGING ROOM Staff Exchange

Florence Jauberthie at Mejeriet (Lund, Sweden)

Hej / Hello / Salut !

After several months where I’ve tried to gather all the young people in exchange within TEH network to build this blog, I’m very glad at last to write my first article in the Youth Exchange Blog! And I’m quite happy that there are already some articles here (not writing only by me!).

 Let’s do the presentation:

I’m Florence. I’m from France. I might say that I’m the typical cliché of the Frenchwoman, because I can’t live without cheese, wine and “baguette”. Look at the picture if you want to know why…

* Translation: “Bread, wine and cheese: that’s good for the health!”

But since I live in Sweden, I have learned to live without (or with less, let’s say!), and I discover an other way of life… Not so bad I have to say!

Here, I have learned a new word: « Fika ». And I can’t live without now!  Fika is a special word to refer to a social institution in Sweden: the coffee break. Swedes have made a special verb and noun for that, to show how is important in their culture! Everything is a pretext for a fika, even at work.  Fika rocks!

I’m doing my European Voluntary Service at Mejeriet, in the really cute and charming city of Lund, in the Southern part of Sweden, in the Skåne region where all the people talk with a strong accent (« skanska »)!

In France, I was involved in many cultural projects and places, like Mains d’Oeuvre my sending organisation where I was volunteering last year for different cultural events (concerts, exhibitions, theatre) and some office tasks.  EVS is a way for me to learn differently, and gain experience in the cultural field when being abroad. A full life experience in fact!

Changing country, changing language, changing “room”, changing food. Indeed, changing life.

That’s something I’ve never experienced in my life.

And I might say after seven months living here that I’m proud of myself, dared to change my habits and to broaden my mind.  It’s like to learn life again…

And that one’s of the amazing and best thing that I’ve done in my life!

Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

 Until next September, I’ll try to give you an overview about my EVS experience in Sweden through some articles and pictures… Feel free to follow me !

Vi ses snart / See you soon / A bientôt !

Most of my EVS activities in culture center Rex consist of work on the Free Zone project. I assist for other projects or culture events too, but specifically in this article I will talk about the Free Zone project and its most visible part: the Free Zone Festival. The Free Zone project was initiated in 2005 by Katarina Zivanović and Marko Popović and its activities are successfully realized year after year till today.

The Free Zone team works on the activities during the whole year and all activities are divided into four activity areas: FREE ZONE Bg consists of a film festival organized every year in November and of film screenings organized every month in Rex. FREE ZONE Sr is a tour of selected films from the festival all around Serbia. FREE ZONE Jr is a program for high school students which consists of film screenings for high school students, of campuses where students are taught about film production and of seminars for high school professors of Civic Education. FREE ZONE on TV is a screening of films from festival on TV.

The Free Zone Festival is a festival of documentary films engaged in human rights topics. It is a festival with no TV shows or low-budget videos, but with the latest documentaries, feature and short films of reputable directors. Film selectors choose films awarded at international festivals as Hot Docs, Karlovy Vary IFF, Silverdocs, One World IFF, Berlin IFF, Sundance FF and many others or films nominated for Oscar Award. As Marko Popović festival fundator and film selector says: “The festival is meant to increase our awareness of the world, which we are definitely part of. … Free Zone will present films concerned with political and social issues throughout the world today. The films deal with the way people live in today’s world, when any global issue can potentially become a local one. The heroes are ordinary people fighting for their basic rights, such as right to have a normal childhood, a decent living, a decent job and a decent salary. … If we want to find our place within the world and abandon dichotomy „there“ and „here“, „they“ and „us“, we have to know and understand what is going on in it.“ (Catalogue of Free Zone 2005)

Thanks to EVS I had opportunity to lend a hand on the fifth year of Free Zone. With other members of team I worked on a catalogue of the festival, contact list of volunteers, promotion of the festival, I was interviewing the audience during the festival and assisting in office = CybeRex for two months. I could follow small successes and disasters which occurred daily the whole time, I could follow different approaches of the team members. Since I became part of the team meanwhile huge preparations and time pressure, I just had to jump into the process. I appreciate this fact, because of that I settled down and knew various characters of the team faster.

A big part of the team members is changed every year what can be inconvenient, but apparently it is not an obstacle in this case. For the Free Zone 2009 I worked mainly with Bojana Ćućilović - project coordinator, Olivera Randjić - project organizer, Alexander Stamatovski – my EVS colleague, Rajko Petrović – selector, Marija Stanojčić - PR coordinator and Jeja Veljković - guest service coordinator. There were many other important members working outside of the CybeRex. I have to mention a group of almost thirty volunteers – Serbian high school and university students who did a big job during realization of the festival. The organization team of the festival is giving every year a lot of chances and opportunities to new people and to youth to get experience, skills and contacts. Thereby the Free Zone team implements one of the human rights – right to participate on public, civic and cultural life.

The Free Zone festival 2009 celebrated its 5th anniversary and it was for the first time held in two movie theaters in Belgrade – The Belgrade Cultural Center and Cinema Balkan. The motto of the festival: „ … And Action!“ was referring not only to the main characters of the selected movies, but it was appealing to everybody to make the first step in fulfilling the dreams, in fighting for your way of life and your society even in „the time of crisis“.

Martina Prokopová

Ahoj! ☺ Zdravo!

I am Martina from north of Slovakia, small village on the borders with Poland. I grew up on a farm in a big family and I still love countryside and mountains a lot. My maternal language was Horal dialect what is mix mainly of Slovak and Polish language but it consists of many old Slavic terms. This fact helps me to understand some phrases from Slavic languages and it also helped me a lot to learn Serbian. After passing bachelor examination of Culture studies I decided to get more practice in culture field. I decided to go to work abroad as an EVS volunteer, my sending organisation is Stanica Žilina-Záriečie.

At the moment, I work as an EVS volunteer in Belgrade in culture center Rex, which is settled in the old downtown. At present, half of my residence passed but there is still half of year before me.

Until now I have worked on many different projects and have obtained a lot of new experience. By sequel in this blog I would like to share with you some of my experiences, positive impressions and images of my friends and colleagues.

Hope you will enjoy my posts and attachements … feel free … or freakly … to comment them!