Vladimir: Our Trainee from Macedonia

I came to youngCaritas for 3 weeks as part of the emPower program where I am student in Perstalozzi Children’s Foundation in Trogen, Switzerland. There I live and study with 14 people from 4 continents and 7 countries. We are all representatives of local NGO`s from our home countries. The aim of the program is to gain new knowledge about the topics that NGOs daily deal with and transfer back them in our future work. The study topics of the «emPower» program are: Intercultural communication, Human rights, Child rights, Education for democratic citizenship, Gender, Pedagogical approaches, and Creative conflict resolution.

Part of the program is this Internship, which aims to get practically involved in the activities of the organizations, establish new partnerships and gain new ideas for our future work. I was very lucky to be chosen to work with the youngCaritas. Very positive team, full of energy, experience and ideas. Every day is a new challenge and big experience for me. Until now I had many meetings and introductions about the work of Caritas network, Caritas Schweiz and youngCaritas. I was even able to participate on a seminar about the new Migration campaign (of youngCaritas Europe) in Caorle, Italy. Where I had a chance to meet the members and volunteers of ‘youngCaritas Europe’. I amm looking forward to the new challenges that this Internship brings and share my experiences and projects from Macedonia.

Back in my country I finished my Bachelor degree in Business and Economics and I am part of the NGO Center for education and development (CED) (Like us on Facebook!) for almost 6 years. I started as a volunteer and progressed to now be project coordinator.

Unfortunately I am here just for 3 weeks, because of the tight schedule. After that I have a small summer vacation and then I am going back to Trogen, where I will study until November 2015. After the studies I plan to continue working in the NGO field where I will use all the gained experience in order to improve my work and increase the scope of activities.

This article was written by our emPower student Vladimir Gjorgjevski and was originally published during his internship at youngCaritas on the 12th of July 2015.