224. Swiss Visit

Swiss team member, community member, mayor, school sports director and
school director  planning for the fence around the soccer field

The largest project I undertook as a Peace Corps Volunteer is when a Swiss group came to Moldova to do outreach and community improvement projects.  A small group came in the early part of 2012 to find locations to do work in, between then and July I worked to plan the activities and events they would take part in.  In July the Swiss team,f 70 members strong, came to Moldova via train and they stayed for 10 days.  The split into about four locations all over Moldova and 20 stayed in my village.

Afternoon children's program

I worked with the mayor, Orthodox priest, Baptist pastor, local soup kitchen and the organization I work with to plan the schedule, activities, food and sleeping arrangements for the Swiss team that would be in my village.  It was a lot of work and stressful, but I had a lot of help from the people I work with, a fellow Peace Corps volunteer and the people of my village.

The team had three main work projects that they worked on in the morning included: pouring and placing sidewalks, constructing a wall on the soccer field and assisting elderly people around their homes in in their gardens.  During the afternoon the group would continue to work on those projects as well as run a children’s program for 6 to 14 year old.  The Swiss team worked with local youths 15 to 20 years old to plan and create games and programming for the afternoon children’s day camp.  They did a children’s camp for 5 days and the first day there were 20 children, but the last day there were around 120 children plus parents.

Halfway through the whole trip the entire Swiss team gathered together to switch the teams and share about their experiences.  They also invited Moldovans from my community, so some of the teens that have worked beside the Swiss group went on the weekend retreat.  There was singing and lots of food to try; it was very exciting for the Moldovans because they don’t always have a time or the money to do things like this.

While it was pretty stressful for me, it turned out to be a great 10 days.  I feel that they community really got something out of it.  A few people in the community were embarrassed that so many people came from Switzerland to help the elderly in Moldova; they hoped that this would wake up Moldovans to volunteer a little bit of their time to help their own community and the elderly in their community.