Ahoj.info project
Two volunteers, two neighbouring countries, two Tandem offices – these are the key words to describe the ahoj.info project. Every year a volunteer from the Czech Republic comes to Germany and in turn a volunteer from Germany comes to the Czech Republic. This year I am a volunteer at the Tandem office in Regensburg and Isabelle is a volunteer at the Tandem office in Pilsen. We meet at joint Tandem events that take place either in Germany or in the Czech Republic. We also communicate very intensively online. Not only so that we can chat together (although that is of course part of it), but mainly we discuss important organizational matters. Within ahoj.info project man organizes two Czech-German events (a video seminar in Germany and a youth conference in the Czech Republic) and prepares regular posts on Instagram and Facebook.
In mid-March, the video seminar “Our Future World”, which we have been preparing intensively, took place at the Waldmünchen Youth Education Centre. Young people aged 16-26 from Germany and the Czech Republic met to discuss how the world of the future might look like and to implement their ideas together in the form of short films. You can read more about this in my next blog post “My travel diary or travelling with Tandem”.
Our regular social media posts can cover a wide range of Czech-German topics. One of the things I appreciate about my voluntary service with Tandem is that I can freely choose topics in a Czech-German context. Former volunteer Maren wrote blog posts about her life in Pilsen and her travels in the Czech Republic and Germany. I am comparing German and Czech idioms that have the same meaning but are phrased differently in German and Czech. Every Friday I post these idioms in the form of a picture carousel on Instagram and Facebook. For instance, when is something ,,as clear as mud,, (english idiom): Versteht nur Bahnhof (literally in English: You only understand the station), or Jsi z toho jelen (literally in English:Are you deer from that)? And that’s exactly the point. 🙂
As a volunteer, one can also do other activities in Tandem, such as helping colleagues to organise and run events. One can also write short texts about news on the ahoj.info website for the regular newsletter. I think it’s great that one can choose which activities one wants to take part in, and the colleagues in Tandem are helpful and happy to get one involved in their projects.
So far I have described my daily life in the office. In fact, my volunteer service also includes quite a lot of time spent on business trips. Some might find that too much, but there are people like me who feel on the top of the world when they can travel a lot. 🙂 Here is a brief overview of my business trips so far:
- Tandem-Herbstklausur/Autumn evaluation meeting in Bärnau
- Aufbauschulung für Sprachanimateur:Innem/Follow-up training for language animators in Klingenthal
- Deutsch-Tschechisches Jugendtreffen/Czech-German Youth Meeting in Berlin
- On Arrival-Seminar für ESK-Freiwilligen/On Arrival-Seminar for ESK-Volunteers in Munich
- Fortbildung zu deutsch-tschechischem Jugendaustausch ” Gemeinsame Geschichte”/Training on Czech-German Youth Exchange “Shared History” at the Max Mannheimer Studienzentrum in Dachau
- ahoj.info-Videoseminar in Waldmünchen
- Tandem-Frühlingsklausur/Spring evaluation meeting in the village Rybníky
Stay tuned, my next post “My travel diary or travelling with Tandem” will be up soon:)