As a participant of the Tool M&E up project, I can freely say that this experience is one of the most unforgettable experiences. Even if I joined later in the process, I was working together with another volunteer from CID – Tea Misevska – who joined the project from its beginning and she acted as a mentor for the preparation process.
Tea shared with us the knowledge that she gained in the first training regarding the monitoring and evaluation of a project, different methods of doing evaluation, her past experiences in participating in projects, etc. After the first part of the project was over, together we implemented the assignment of organising an activity in the local community: our group chose to evaluate the young people that come to the youth center that CID is running, MultiKулти, who are of different age, cultural background, ethnic background, etc. about their views on discrimination, stereotypes, friendship. And then we were ready to start the second part of the project which was held in Gabrovo, Bulgaria.
The project itself was amazing: the hotel where we were hosted, the sessions, the mentors and participants from a lot of countries (Malta, Wales, Slovenia, Turkey, England, Macedonia, Romania). There were also youth workers that used to work for more then 30 years in this sector and had a lot of experience which a young volunteer as me can learn from. We learned the best ways to evaluate a project, how to organize a project on our own, how to do the preparations for it.
I would suggest everyone who has an opportunity to apply for this kind of projects and to learn a lot of new things, meet different cool people and have tons of fun!
Viktor Velickovski