Slovenian volunteer Ms Nives Raznjevic spent the past year working with youth in Croatia, with EUSA – her sending organisation – proud of all she achieved in her fruitful time at Non-Governmental Organisation Ocean Znanja.

In 2019, while completing her Master’s Degree at the University of Ljubljana, Ms Raznjevic decided to sign up as a volunteer through the European Voluntary Service/European Solidarity Corps, with Slovenia-based organisation EUSA as her sending organisation.

In an exchange with Croatian volunteer Ms Zrinka Tabain, who spent a productive 12 months in the EUSA Office, Ms Raznjevic spent 12 months as a volunteer in Croatia at Ocean Znanja, as she recounts her enjoyabke expereince below:

“My name is Nives and I will share a short summary of my one-year EVS experience volunteering in the Ocean Znanja NGO in the Zagreb, Croatia. It all started with my deep desire for personal development. During the 2019 summer I was almost finishing my Master’s degree in Biochemistry at the University of Ljubljana while working a student job part-time as well. Soon enough, I reached high levels of exhaustion and I knew I needed to revise my approach to the things I had been doing.

That was when I found out about Ocean Znanja's training course focusing on resilience, motivation, values and emotion which was happening in Lipik, Croatia in August 2019. Needless to say, I was delighted by everything I learned, but mostly by the atmosphere and non-formal education methods. That is when I realised I really wanted to become part of Ocean Znanja and learn everything that goes hand in hand with youthwork facilitation.



Following my one-year volunteering experience at Ocean Znanja, I have gained so much practical as well as formal, non-formal and informal knowledge. With the help of the organisation, I have held several workshops for the youth. Topics concentrated mostly on the theme of my project, ACTeen, which was mainly focused on active citizenship. We talked and got insights about critical thinking, how we can make a change in society, environment, political bias, sustainability, solidarity and the valuable use of unproductive time. This was really challenging for me because I have realised how many details there are when you are conducting a workshop, but also how to keep the things in the control and focus on the important aspects such as active listening of the participants, focusing on remembering only the bullet points of the topic and opening up the space for everyone to express themselves, learn and have fun in a safe environment.



The Coronavirus outbreak unfortunately stopped this in-person experience for quite some time, so we had to adapt to the situation by doing remote, online work. That is when I gained so much knowledge about social media and developed my digital competence. I made educational videos about the topic of my EVS as well as planned, made, organised and published content on the Ocean Znanja's Instagram page.

My personal project was focused on the extensive guide to proper Instagram page management. It is my legacy to every new volunteer that will come to Ocean Znanja and I hope it will help them with standardisation and content creation.

All in all, I believe this is one of the most valuable experiences in my life and would recommend it to anyone to try it out as well."



EUSA thanks Ms Raznjevic for her contribution and for sharing her experiences, and encourages all interested involved in volunteering to follow similar channels in being of assistance to organisations across Europe. EUSA became an accredited organisation for European Voluntary Service (EVS) in 2012, and has since hosted over 20 long-term volunteers, and is now also part of the European Solidarity Corps (ESC).

To learn more about such volunteering opportunities, please visit https://www.eusa.eu/projects/volunteering.