This week we will get to know Davide, 30 years, from Italy. He works at the Ukrainian Culture Center in Tallinn where he does many different tasks.
Did Estonia choose you or did you choose Estonia?
I chose Estonia. Basically, I was looking for a culturally oriented project. I randomly typed things into Google. I found the presentation of the project very intriguing and I said: why not?! I applied to several organizations for my EVS and the Ukrainian Culture Center the first who answered and so I got chosen.
How does a normal day at the Ukrainian Culture Center look like?
The schedule is maybe a bit different in comparison to other projects. I live 5 meters away from here so I can always wake up 10 minutes before I start working. Normally, I start at 10.30 and work till 16.30. One of my routine works is doing and folding postcards. It is one of the things we do in the center here along with for example doing paper or printing. Furthermore, I cook a lot. Every single day we all eat together as a big family. Since I’m here I, therefore, improved my cooking skills 😉 and everyone has to eat my Italian dishes anyway. I believe I’m really good in doing wild tuna pasta!At the moment, I’m also working in the museum of wood horses here in the center. But we just started it last year, so it’s still quite small and I’m trying to develop it. I took pictures of all the old wooden toys and I’m currently trying to describe them. But things happen quite randomly here.
Why did you choose to do EVS?
When I was 20, I did my civilian service in Italy. We had one event and someone presented EVS. Back then I already thought: That’s amazing. You can go abroad and search for a program yourself in which you are interested in. For me, it sounded so exciting. I really wanted to do it for a long time and collected information for quite some time. Then 4 years ago, I applied for an EVS, but during the selection process, I got an offer to do my PhDand I decided to do that. So now was the last moment to do EVS and I said to myself: Now or never!
Half of your time is over now; do you feel any change?
I’m enriched by a lot of nice encounters because I met really great people. In these intense encounters, I definitely learned a lot from a human point of view. But since I also still had to finish my Ph.D. and I had some other academic things that I was caught up with, there was always kind of an anchor that was holding me. So, I didn’t have any big personality changes but also because I know myself pretty well after so many years of being in the world 😉
Davide Ermacora stays in Estonia for 12 months within the project ”Broadening Horizons” which is funded by Erasmus+ European Voluntary Service programme.
