Volunteering at Tbilisi EYOF 2015

I want to tell you guys that if you have an opportunity to participate in something big, something great, even if you are a volunteer, just take part in it! That will be a great experience for you and you won't ever forget it! And now I'll tell you about my decision in participating in Tbilisi EYOF 2015 and how good it is that I did it!

Well, I admit, that I thought that I didn’t really love volunteering. So when my friend and sister told me about this event and volunteering there, I didn’t want to fill out the application form. But then, I thought a little and I decided that this event was worth volunteering, because it was one of the major events in Europe and it would be really cool to see all those teams from different countries competing with each other. And, at the same time, I would not just see them competing with each other, but also I would see their trainings and stuff like that. So, I would know more about them than the people watching their matches and competitions.

So, the registration on volunteering was open for a really long time, something about a year, I think. And I remember that it was September when my friend showed me the link, and that it was October or November when my sister told me about it and then I decided to register. So did they. Then we waited for their call.

The first stage was then the filling out of some forms and a little bit of conversations with the department staff there, kind of a job interview. So, we filled out those forms, they took some photos of us and told us that they would contact us.

Then they chose some people from us and called us and we went on these interviews with them. The interviews were in Georgian and then in English or whatever language you had mentioned to know in their application forms.

So this whole selection process was pretty long. And we had to wait for them to call us and stuff like that. And since I was not really fond of this whole volunteering thing in the first place, I thought I would not participate in it anymore and I was kind of ready to turn down everything they would offer. I mean, I had some choices of position chosen in my application form and I didn’t know what position I would take yet. Well, at first, it turned out I was to be an attaché and they told me that when they called me. The attaché was a really responsible job _ getting information for the team and set their schedules and guide them and be with them all the time, etc. I felt kind of scared at first, but I said “okay” and went on a training, which was held in Tbilisi Davit Aghmashenebeli University. There I met some friends, too, and I didn’t know they were participating in this too. So I was kind of glad that I didn’t refuse to be an attaché or a volunteer at all. They gave us some general information about volunteering and the EYOF and we even played some games about the rules and history of the Olympics that we had just got information about. It was good and I came home feeling kind of proud of myself that I was doing something nice.

But, see, I was a medical volunteer in the Tbilisi EYOF 2015. So, wonder how I ended up there? Okay, I will tell you about that.

First of all, I’m a 4-th year medical student at Tbilisi State Medical University. And it was my 3-rd year at university then. So when the Youth Olympics Committee saw my “file” and read that information, they said: why not put her in the medical staff?! So they called me and asked my why I hadn’t written medicine as one of my choices in the application form. So that’s when they told me to come and be interviewed as a medical volunteer. And that’s what I did.

Photo gallery