Spring update: Galati, Technovation Challenge, & something called COS

Over the weekend, Philip and I took a ride with Svetlana and a student, Mihaela, to Galați, Romania.  Philip and I presented a workshop on why one should volunteer to members of ATAC, the Association of Active Civic Youth.  The subject content is so much of what I live and breathe that it seemed like barely any work to me.  Romania has a very similar culture in terms of volunteering:  it's very new and not very popular.

I'm really luck in Căușeni.  Students seem to know what volunteering is now and are voluntarily volunteering!  It's like a light switch flipped, and one by one youth are coming to the bright side.  Thus, during the weekend, Svetlana also got to share with the group and leaders of ATAC how the culture regarding volunteering in our small town has started to change to become more positive.

Philip and I doing our thing. With 22 months behind us, facilitating this workshop felt like second nature.

The most important part of the workshop was when participants worked on their ideas.  They began with identifying the most important needs in their community, followed by identify goals/objectives that could help meet them.  The final step (at least for this workshop) was to create an activity based on each objective they created.

Galați is a nice Romanian city of 250,000 people with the largest port on the Danube River.  I was pleasantly surprised at just how lovely their pedestrian walkway along the river was with its cute cafes and restaurants.  I even got a perfect morning run in along the Danube!

Now we are back in Moldova, preparing for our COS Conference (Close of Service that is... what? already!?) and also a Technovation Challenge Advanced Hack Day to be held Saturday.  My girls have been working hard amongst a lot of academic work and other activities to build their app prototype on App Inventor.  I give them props!

My Technovation Team nailing down some business model details.