CCI Greenheart Exchange Student and the Greenheart Volunteer Experience

Hello everyone! I’m Ketevan, an exchange student from The Republic of Georgia. I’ve been living in the U.S.A for six months and I’m really enjoying my time! I live in an awesome community and I’m having a good experience. I’ve been volunteering since I came here an I can tell that this time helped me to find out that volunteering is the best way to give your love to other people and make them happy. I have realized that serving people is a big pleasure for me and I’m happy that it has happened in this age and now I have lots of time to do what I really enjoy. These 6 months were good lesson for me to learn all the skills that a volunteer needs and to be more involved in that field, but I think that one of the most important skills that a volunteer needs is the desire that he/she really wants it. I’ve done lots of different kinds of community service with different people and I think I already have a good experience but I’m not going to stop and after I finish my exchange program I’m going to continue in my country (as there are no volunteering groups over there, I wish I could establish one) and then I really want to go abroad somewhere to help people over there too. I have already started searching for some affordable volunteering programs. As for my volunteering project that I’ve already done there are lots of them but the most interesting and enjoyable is volunteering with a program called “21st Century” It’s an after school program for 8-10 years old kids to help them in doing homework and play with them, but the most amazing part is that they are interested in my country and culture so I decided to give classes on my country’s traditional songs and dances. I told them about the history of the flag and the national anthem and answered lots of questions that they were interested in. They learned lots of Georgian words and finally we managed to sing a Georgian song together! It was exciting! The other community service that I’m involved in is the Mayor’s Youth Advisory Council. We students and the Mayor of our community have meetings twice a month and we plan lots of community service projects for our town. I really enjoy spending time with them and helping people, and the other good thing about volunteering is that I met lots of new people and made friends!