On Arrival Training with the European Voluntary Service

Pablo's Smiling Face (Pablo is not actually called Pablo)

I sat across from Pablo at dinner and he grinned at me cheerfully, as was his way. In his broken Italian he told me with enthusiasm how excited he was about the events of that day and thanked me profusely for my part in it. “It was so democratic!” He kept saying. He said it was the first time he’d made a positive change as part of a group. It was beautiful.

This post details the events Pablo was talking about and gives a little background information about the week of compulsory training I attended for the European Voluntary Service.

A wreck.

Earlier that day, during the break of our Italian class, I had been standing outside lending an ear to another volunteer who was thinking of leaving the training. She was a bit of a wreck, mostly due to the constant intensity of being around sixty other people with no time or space to be alone, or even leave the grounds of the hotel. We were on day 4 of 7 and it had been a drain on all of us.

That’s when we heard one of the organisers call us back up to the class because they wanted to talk to us. We hesitated, wanting to finish our conversation, and they barked down to us that we should come in “now”. In the classroom the two female organisers proceeded to give us an earful about the tomfoolery that had gone on the evening before. They told us that as a consequence we wouldn’t be going on the planned trip that evening, and as we began to protest, they raised their voices and stormed off.

So angry I nearly killed this child I found

I was fuming. The only time I take abuse like that is when I’m paid to; and I was not being paid. In fact, we were only in this bloody hotel because we were all doing our European Voluntary Service “On Arrival Training”. 

This was the second time we’d been talked to like that by the organisers and it was in keeping with the paternalistic attitude we’d been getting all week. On top of that, the trip that she was talking about was one of only two opportunities we had to leave the grounds of the hotel! 

It was in Campania, near Naples, but that didn’t really matter because we had left the grounds only once. There were no bus stops, train stations, main roads, pubs, bars or museums. Just a corner shop and a pizzeria (of course). I’d been out running a couple of times and there wasn’t even pavement on the surrounding roads. Total isolation.

Just kill me now and be done with it.

Granted, it was very scenic; the mountain ranges in the distance were quite a dramatic backdrop for our activities. The idea behind this isolation was that we would be able to bond as a group more easily and we would be able to focus on our “work”. Work consisted of four hours of workshops each day and four hours of Italian classes. 

The workshops were hit and miss. The two guys leading them were good fun though; they were always performing with all they had and I felt sorry for them knowing we were the first group of four. Sometimes they had us role playing obnoxious imaginary cultures or trying to resolve imaginary conflicts in the cut throat realm of orange trading. 

Team building exercise '99

Other times they had us wanting to claw our own eyes out as we drudged our way through seemingly arbitrary tasks set by the EU (i.e. “what qualities does a volunteer need to have?”) The fundamental flaw was that after an hour or two, most people switch off – let alone eight every day.

Even our meals were strictly timetabled each day. This left us with only a couple of hours to ourselves in the evening – but with very little to do. A consequence of all this was that in the evenings people drank. Quite a lot apparently. 

I'm sort of in a band?

Being the only English person there I was fortunate enough to have my ego massaged ; several times I got “oh, are you Michael?” or “You must be the English guy (that everyone’s talking about)?”. And throughout the week people asked me to sing and check their English or Italian. I probably left with a slightly larger head,

But back to the notorious evening in question; I had been up quite late, so I’d seen one of the female organisers have to get out of bed to let some people in to their rooms. It was understandable that she was annoyed and tired but her management of the situation was terrible.

So, after several days of this isolation and monotony, the prospect of being locked in this luxurious EU prison for yet another evening was disturbing.  The lesson continued for another half an hour but all I could think of was how to tell them to stick it. In the next break I facilitated a meeting where decide how to communicate our frustration to the organisers. 

Most people spoke and it felt good to vent. The group was brilliant; an international bunch of inspiring and exasperating characters. The teacher was sympathetic and also gently put across the managements’ position and we came to some sort of understanding. There were three points we decided to communicate to the management;

The football team in the Kithen

1.      We understood their concerns regarding the behaviour of some of the volunteers.

2.      We wanted to open a dialogue about our free time, especially that evenings trip.

3.      There was a lack of options (associated with the isolation of the venue) which may have contributed to this behaviour.

This is a "boys only" coup. No girls allowed/

We then went through a process of checking this with the other groups – going down to the other class to discuss it, surreptiously organising to meet altogether with the other half of the cohort after lunch by passing the message over the tables.  Afterwards around forty of us gathered on the tiny lawn. Our translation was thorough and an amendment was made but everyone seemed to agree on the main gist. The organisers were called over, I explained why were gathered and then my flatmate Karolin read out the points.

Revolution

A fat man we guessed was the boss, although this was never really communicated to us, replied. He very diplomatically explained that it wasn’t their intention to patronise us and the decision not to go on the trip was not intended as a punishment. It was, rather, simply that they did not trust that it would not happen again outside of the hotel and have more serious repercussions. Eventually he agreed to take us the following evening, if all went well that night.

A well earned excursion into the real world

Afterwards, we all clapped, everyone dissipated and two volunteers came over and thanked me for being their voice. I’d been so involved in the momentum of the process I hadn’t really thought about how it was unfolding. I felt proud. I felt proud of all the volunteer led events I had learned from and all the facilitation and conflict resolution I must have learnt from them. I realised that a lot of people there might never have seen the kind of horizontal process we’d adopted. The will to confront the management was driven by anger but the way we expressed it was measured and shaped by all those previous group experiences.

In this re-telling I’ve obviously focused on some of the negative aspects of the training, but of course it wasn’t all that bad. The international community we built over the course of the week was wonderful and the adversity we faced helped us foster it. The food was good and we had a fun time.

Tomfoolery if ever I've seen it

We later found out that on the notorious evening in question there was an incident we were unaware of; a couple had drunkenly snuck into the kitchen for a bit of privacy, only to find that they couldn’t get back out again. They spent the whole night in there to be awoken by the kitchen staff in the morning.