Luca Cravero from the European Voluntary Service in Nagybajom
A day of unordinary fun in Nagybajom.
Saturday – October 8th, 2011 – 7:00 am – All started with the morning trumpets waking everybody up. Another thrilling mission was waiting for Compass and the troupe was ready to set off at 8:00am from Kaposvár; final destination: Nagybajom, a small village located in the countryside to the west of our town. We would have arrived there at around 8:30pm and been warmly welcomed at the local Community Centre belonging to the Csányi Foundation.
This NGO, deriving its name from his founder and owner Mr Csányi Sándor, consists of 5 community centres spread around Hungary: Jászberény, Szeged, Kaposvár, Pécs and Nagybajom. The day’s pivot was an indoor football tournament taking place at the local Sport Hall, conceded by the Major, and involving the several teams made up of the 60 youths, aged 12-19 years, attending the 5 centres. We EVS volunteers did our best to help with the conduction of the event and split ourselves into different teams, each of these looking after different areas: the Sport Hall (playground and buffet), the preparation of the ‘pörkölt’ to be distributed to the participants at lunch time, the conduction of group games to involve and entertain the kids not taking part in the tournament. As far as I am concerned, I was in the morning at the Sport Hall, preparing the buffet for the players (apples and drinks) and attending some of the matches too. When among the spectators, me and some mates of mine had the chance to meet some of the community youths and speak with them. Surprisingly we found out that all of them spoke excellent English and this, thanks to the language courses regularly provided by the Foundation as part of the daily activity schedule.
To better understand what we are talking about, let’s spend now a few words with regard to the Organization. This hosts kids and youths living in a situation of social disadvantage; here, they are assisted and ‘cared’ from the age of 10 until they finish university. By conversing with Balazs Hornyak, mentor and leader of the Nagybajom center, we discovered that the Foundation provides the youths with excellent opportunities for free such as: language courses, IT courses, travelling abroad opportunities and cultural activities like, for instance, the possibility to attend concerts, theatre plays and so on. Personally speaking, I think that such an initiative would be extremely useful in every country. In my home place in Italy, for example, I know a few realities that would without doubt benefit from a similar chance; I sometimes think how much valuable such a Foundation is because enable plenty of children to exploit their full potential that would be otherwise wasted.
Let’s go back to the day of the event now. After the tournament, me and my team moved back to the Community Center where we found the other members of the Compass expedition, the ‘cooks’, meddling with a smoky ‘bogracs’ on fire, full of deliciously smelling ‘pörkölt’ waiting for us. After a while (as you all know ‘pörkölt’ preparation requires a lot of patience…), we heard the cook master, Ottavio from Italy, ringing the bell: the lunch was ready and in a matter of minutes everyone was served. This would not have been possible without the hard work of the ‘kitchen army’ (among these, Compass’ President Andrea and our mentor Dora), dealing with the chopping of tons of meat and the peeling of an equal amount of potatoes. The afternoon proceeded then with a series of games in the garden of the Center (by the way, the sun was shining), enjoyed together with a group of youths. While Elia, the other Italian volunteer and our official photo-reporter, kept on taking pictures to immortalize the day, Alejandro from Spain had the brilliant idea to place the table tennis in the garden and this became the main attraction until the end of the day at 5:00pm.
Before the start of the tournament we attended the opening speech by Mr Csányi, whom came to Nagybajom for the occasion.
This event was the first of a series, that we hope will be long, deriving from the collaboration started between Compass and the Foundation. The two Organizations embrace in fact the same cause: to increase the value of youth’s time and skills by employing these in a constructive and useful way. Next appointment will see us Compass again in Nagybajom next Wednesday, November 16th, for an Eco Project focusing on the theme of recycling and involving activities like the painting of plastic bottle chairs (that you already know very well). Our thanks in advance to Mr Csányi, the local Major, the teachers and the children for their collaboration in the next week’s event. Such a synergy will probably have another step in December with some Christmas focused activities.
by Luca Cravero fom Italy