Education in Alliance

During our first two months of our volunteer experience at Alliance, we had the opportunity to receive many and interesting trainings related to different topics from management to health.

On the first month we got acquainted with the country´s culture (including how to deal with the natural cultural shock) as well as some formation related how to create and manage a successful business/project. In this regard, the classes provided by Dawn Talbert, about Marketing and Public Relations, were very important components.

During the posterior weeks we got more knowledge on how to manage a successful communication, with the help of Alona Karavai. With this, we learned the importance of different tools of communications (such as energizers, games or theatre) and which one is more appropriate to use according to the goal (debate models, conferences, workshops etc). For instance we learned the importance of connecting on different levels with the audience, such as the mental, physical or emotional.

Ozzy’s opinion

In my opinion, I like educational training, for example formal, informal and non-formal education seminar was really interesting for me. First of all we separated 3 groups and we chose our topics for presentations. After that we prepared some important headlines about our education system. Groups started to discussion their topics each other. Those presentations were quite useful for me, because I have experience in education from my country. But in that training, we talked about educational systems positive and negative situations. I want to attend again with EVS groups; maybe I can be a moderator. Alliance provided a lot of workshops and trainings for all of us. That training matched with my real project. Now I can choose true education for my pupils.

Gabriel’s opinion

Coming from a formal education background in Portugal, it was an unexpected but interesting approach on non-formal and informal education through workshops, trainings and discussions.

It was also interesting learning about the inner processes and schematics of an NGO at a marketing level, mainly through the workshops on Strategic Fund-raising and Team building. This type of education and information is useful, not only for enterprises like an NGO, but also for individuals to learn how to be self financed, economically sustainable and how to connect and build relationships formally.

Additionally, we had a workshop on HIV/AIDS issues about the social stigma and the statistics in Ukraine, especially in Donetsk. It was truly an eye opener and luckily we were invited to present a previous work about this issue at the incoming volunteers.

It’s also worth to mention the training for trainers we had, it was really fruitful, especially for me, as I have English classes twice a week in Alliance office and teach English as well with Marta to youngsters in a Gorlovka Elementary school.

All and all, it has been interesting to develop my education, training and teaching skills and hopefully they can contribute to my own self growth and professional path.

Miguel’s opinion

In my opinion the most interesting training was about Marketing and PR as well the internal Strategic fund-raising workshop, which allowed us to define the short, medium and long term goals of Alliance Organization. Here, we also were introduced about possible options for self financing such as the possible implementation of quotes or crowd funding, in order to set its own economical sustainability. Personally it was very interesting, because it showed the problems of managing an NGO, as well as it´s common problems of growth. Also the training about communication and energizers are very useful, whenever we have to communicate in public and how to do it in an effective and clear way.