My Experience with Reach the Rainbow

My name is Šárka and I´m a member of Duha I-club. In the Doduhy project I had a role of Czech teacher and tutor.


I supposed the summer 2007 would be a bit grey for me because of big exam at the end of it and all the preparation I planned differently, but then I got the chance to teach Czech to EVS volunteers coming to Duha. I taught a group of wonderful motivated students and it was a big pleasure for me to bring them something from my language. It was my first experience with teaching Czech for foreign people and I can say I really liked it. The „official“ part of the project was a big motivation for my future life.

But I don´t want to talk about officialities. Above at all those EVS volunteers, my students, became very good friends of mine and they have made my summer really colourful. Normally I wouldn´t like things like tiredness, insomnia and lack of confort, but suddenly I could enjoy them. As some people say every voluntary work can turn to “big bordel” at one point. But probably this is one of the most important reasons to do it – if you manage to handle this mess some of your usual personal problems become less valuable and you open your eyes for problems of other people and problems in the society.

Our first common experience was at music festival Yanderov in Chrudim. We were helping with collecting rubish, tapping the beer and other organizational tasks of the festival and we were having much fun with the TAMJDEM Group Project.

After this weekend volunteers joined their local organizations, but the group didn´t split. We kept on visiting each other.

My local organisation Duha I-club was hosting Valentina and Mister G. Me and my friends we sharing the role of mentors and we were prepared to give them a helping hand. Their helping hand for the I-club was much bigger than ours to them. They were leading some of our childer summer camps and Mister G created the new beatiful design of our web (www.iclub-online.org). I also went with him to lead one of our camps in Germany by the Baltic Sea. Mister G helped me a lot. I would like to thank him this way once more, cause leading of the group with big differencies between members wasn´t really easy and he was more than just another leader of the camp. He had the different point of view “from outside”, which was useful for us and helped us to solve the problems quicker.

Mister G


Now I feel every other camp without EVS volunteer will miss something important...

One of the sences of EVS is to look in the future of common Europe. I´m glad I could experience something, that made me feel this thought really and not just like an empty phrase from newspaper. Especially at our “girl trip” to Krakow and Oswiecim. The flash look back into the past made me much more thankful for the present Europe I´m living in and made me think about the projects from one more point of view.

In September we met in Prague again. We were helping at another Tamjdem weekend - at theatre and music festival Babí léto. The main part of the theatre groups were homeless groups. They played really profesional and the theatre in their presentation became another dimension. Babí léto means Indian summer. It was also a symbolical dot after this fantastic summer. Colours of the rainbow were in the trees and in the faces of the people. Greyness didn´t have any chance. Unfortunately it was the last time for me, on that I could reach the rainbow.
I left to experience Europe as a student at a university abroad. This won´t be my last time with EVS. You motivated me to apply for it in the next years. Thank you for everything!!!
Sarka