Nice to meet you, No Excuse!
So here we are. In the cozy office in the center of charming Ljubljana. Hard to believe it’s been two months since we began our journey as volunteers from the European Solidarity Corps in No Excuse.
About us
We are Maria and Mykhailo, but as Ukrainians are used to, everyone shortens our names as Maša and Miša. We are a young married couple from Kyiv finding ourselves in this great adventure of life.
Miša: For the last 4 years I have lived in Greece, as I studied at the Faculty of Theology there. I have always been eager to learn something new and I’m considering the ESC volunteering as the first step towards a new life.
Maša: Last year I received a bachelor’s degree in journalism and social communication but I’m not really into it, however communication is my pleasure. In addition, my little passion is photography – I’ve been working as a freelance photographer in Ukraine for a couple of years.
Why are we here?
We have always been obsessed with traveling and have heard a lot about Slovenia and its culture but have never been here. Slovenia has the sea and the mountains – in the spring, you can go skiing in the morning and swim in the sea in the afternoon! You can also travel from Slovenia for a day to another neighboring country and it will take no more than one hour. It’s amazing, isn’t it?
The war that continues in our country was a huge eye-opener that taught us not to wait for a “right” time for anything – just do it now and it will be the best choice. That’s why we started to look for an ESC volunteering offer and the most desirable was to find one in Slovenia.
We are very pleased to be a part of No Excuse especially because we share the values of the organization, and we are really interested in all topics of work they do. So, it’s going to be a wonderful and productive experience!
How is it going?
Our goals for this nine months of volunteering are quite simple but fascinating! Firstly, it’s important to get more competences about sustainable development, especially the third goal of it – good health and wellbeing. Also we are eager to gain experience in the development of skills, methods and tools for working with youth and working in a team. We want to learn new things and skills and keep the knowledge with us for life, improving it.
Actually, our first impressions are positive! We are getting involved in the organization’s work, joining some creative processes, researching the field of sustainable development and improving skills in the communication area. We’ve met a lot of new people with different experiences and a lot of knowledge in topics that we are interested in, so that we are happy to work with them.
In our free time we explore Slovenia – the nature here is jaw-dropping and we are impressed with the hospitality and cheerfulness of Slovenians, therefore we feel at home and fell in love with this country!
Trying to become a little bit Slovenian and really expect the next seven months to be very enjoyable 🙂
P.S. Hope to see you somewhere around, as far as until the end of May, we will be a part of local life in Ljubljana!
Maša and Miša
