Mid Term Evaluation 11/20

The last week of November I received an email, saying that in four days I would have my MidTermEvaluation. I was literally in my last two weeks of my ESC placement. It was meant to be happening in April for two days but due to the current situation it got cancelled.
It was very last minute, and I already had a meeting with my sending organization on the first day of this training, so I missed the beginning. The training was two days long. Over zoom. With lots of internet issues for the participants attending.

So what exactly is this training? As the name gives away, it's a training to do an evaluation during the ESC placement. If I remember right only volunteers who are in a project for 9 or 10 months over are entitled to attend this. It's an occasion to do a reflection over the first half (ideally) of the project, check in with your goals that you have set for yourself, speak about issues that might have came up during the placement, and most importantly-as I find- to meet up with other volunteers from different projects or even seeing the ones from the OnArrivalTraining!

Back to the last week of November. I confirmed my attendance but had no time to do an overview of two minutes of my project as we were asked the day (late afternoon?) before and I was busy with preparing my meeting with my sending organization as it was the last one. As well as working on my Youthpass, and there were some other paper issues I had to deal with it. 

We were ten volunteers and two trainers (two of these ten were a fellow volunteer and me from our organization from Northern Ireland, and the rest of the group was from England and Scotland). The used platforms were Zoom, Jamboard and Whatsapp. Some of the topics we were given to discuss were expectations of the projects, reflecting about our experiences, how set goals were reached, Youthpass, personal projects and some other topics and information.

I still don't understand why it took people and organizations involved so long to figure out an alternative to in-person-training.

It was interesting to "meet" other volunteers and talk about our placements but it's not the real deal. (note here: we traveled to the training location last year, spent two nights, prepared meals, went for walks and most important had informal conversations with the other volunteers and even the trainers, etc.) 

Nevertheless, it's important that there is this frame and volunteers are being informed about their rights, goal-setting and trying to reflect once in a while, so we make the most of the placement. And don't get me wrong, I'm lucky that I even had this form of the training as we had some volunteers who couldn't even go to their OnArrivalTraining.

Besides meeting the others virtually, this time around all the other volunteers were from the UK and non from Northern Ireland. There were some questions regarding the EU settlement scheme in the Whatsapp group a few days later, so I'm kind of still in contact with one of the guys, but it's highly unlikely it will go in the direction of last years training: I met up with two of the girls and we became friends and are still in touch.