Summer's starting well

Consider this today’s #AdventuresOfTheMuddyShoes.

It’s the first day of summer and Romania (along with some other countries) is celebrating Children’s Day. I’m a serious young adult by now, but I still love to use this day to make plans for the summer and have a little chat with my inner child - the child who wanted to grow up and change the world as soon as possible. I grew up and I’m changing the world now. Childhood Bea is happy and proud and so is Today Bea. Look at us.

I decided to put together this slightly longer article today to list everything I have planned for this summer from, let’s say, a professional point of view. There’s no particular order for these since most of them will happen in parallel. Whoever said that summer = vacation, did not meet me. For this girl, summer = productivity.

But, before starting the list, I’ll mention the achievement that started my summer.

→ I have been promoted to General Manager of Collab Training Academy CIC.

This is the not-for-profit that took me on board in March 2020 and who’s been helping me understand London, develop my ‘writing using fancy words’ in English, develop the leadership skills I’ve been struggling with for a while now, and many more. The work I do with Collab came as an extension to what I started back in Romania at DEIS. And Maurice (Founder & CEO of Collab) is also my business mentor, helping me set up DEIS UK.

So, this summer:

• I’m starting to work on my first literary project

Using the skills I developed at university in my first and second year, I’ll turn back to Romanian literature. There’s a list of books/canon authors that everyone needs to know for our final exams (the baccalaureate). My plan is to read that list from the perspective of a (becoming) literary critic, read some secondary sources and put together 1500-word essays for each of them. Basically, what I would do for a normal essay at uni.

My goal is to get this work published. I’ve been in touch with my former Romanian Literature teacher and he has some amazing connections that could help this goal materialise.

• DEIS UK

You already know I’m working on this. Jeanine and I aim to launch it on the 19th of August - the day when DEIS (Ro) was born.

Once this gets going, we’ll start our work left and right, designing projects, applying for funding. There will be a lot of work to do, but you can’t imagine how excited I am to start it all. It won’t be easy, no doubt, but I know I have so many people around that will support me no matter what happens and guide me until I find solutions to all my problems.

• The Talk with B (I have to write this down so I can commit to it)

I believe that we, youth workers, are not visible enough and I’m not the only one (apparently). Visibility is one of the priorities set by the 3rd European Youth Work Convention. So, what I want to do is start some kind of vlog or maybe a TikTok account (I’m not sure yet) where every two weeks I talk from a youth worker’s perspective about stuff. From sex-ed to teenage drama and career guidance, I want to cover anything that comes to mind.

I know I should have some SMART goals, but for this one, I just want to try it out and see if it works. Trial and error.

• A social media - influencer - activism - I-don’t-know-how-to-call-it programme done part-online, part-offline with DEIS Ro (for now)

I had an idea for some sort of social media - influencer - activism programme a while ago. It was just an idea and I didn’t know how to shape it. I finally figured it out. This summer I want to design the programme, write it down, and hopefully, we can apply for some funding. The reason I want to pilot this with DEIR Ro is simple: everything is set up and it’s easy to find funding opportunities that will suit. Plus, I want to keep doing projects back home as much as possible and this one is perfect for a mix of online and offline delivery.

Of course, if this goes well I can’t see any reason not to repeat it in London or even make it international so young people from Romania work together with young people from the UK. So many digital tools and platforms have been developed in the past year that it would be a shame not to continue using them to connect without borders.

• Projects & programmes with Collab

At Collab, we’ve been working on loads of projects & programmes in the past few months. We are still designing them, tailoring them for the different groups that we work with, looking for partners and collaborators, and, of course, trying to match them with funding opportunities.

Tomorrow we’re piloting our first career coaching & mentoring programme. And then, we need to decide what we’re launching next. I came to learn that the field of education, training, and employment is quite vast and most of the offer from other organisations barely meets the real needs of the community. Plus, there are some thoughts of going international with Collab as well.

To all of these professional plans, I must add that I MUST get to Baia Mare to see my friends and family and the youth centre. But I will only do that when I know it’s safe to travel and I don’t have to self-isolate when I return.

Here are my plans for this season. Now I must be held accountable if I don’t follow up on these. So, keep an eye on the Adventures of the Muddy Shoes on B-Side Blog - subscribe to my newsletter, like my Facebook page, follow me on Instagram - to stay up to date with whatever I do.