A while ago I would not imagine that...

The task was to research the dynamics of the enclosed island economy and to plan the development of local production that would provide certain degree of sustainability and self-sufficiency. One of the things we did was establishing a local farmers market, which is supposed to strengthen the relationship between local producers and consumers. We discussed the other side of consumption as well - the recycling of waste, which presents a noticeable problem at the moment. We constructed theoretical models of production and distribution of electrical energy considering the potential of natural resources. The last weekend of our stay on Ibiza was different, as I was privileged to spend it with the directrice of the Spanish branch of the Red Cross organization.

After having finished the mid term exams I would never imagine that the final exams would come so soon. The first ones seemed pretty exhausting to me, as they were comparable to the final IB exams in terms of difficulty, with the difference that the same extent of study had to be learned in three months only. Although I don’t have the results yet I hope they will be satisfactory.

I would not expect that there will be another interesting volunteering experience after returning from Ibiza. But there indeed was another one. Having finished my exams I left for a nearby educational centre called Embercombe, where I have spend a couple of weekends before volunteering during the school year. For two weeks I took part in the everyday activity of the centre which organizes educational programmes that present the possibilities of sustainability to students, companies and public.

Finally the thing I would have expected the least of all was the floods that came to the Czech Republic again after eleven years. These floods made go to CR instead of continuing to volunteer in England. My summer holiday thus started with volunteering with under ADRA. I spent a week by clearing out the destroyed houses and providing help to the victims of the floods with other volunteers, firemen and soldiers. Even though we did not sleep much in the school gym where we were accomodated, we dedicated the maximum of our energy to the work. Most of the houses in the area managed by ADRA (villages Křešice, Nučnice and Okna) were cleared out of furniture and mud by the end of the week, which seems to be a big success in comparison to the work after the last floods in 2002. Although most of the work that I did was hard and manual, I have to say that this week of volunteering gave me much more than the two previous programs - I finally felt as doing something with real and instant impact. I met lots of interesting people from various spheres (there were all age and profession groups represented within the volunteer body) and I also saw how the crisis coordination works - the cooperation of state organs, local municipalities, army, firemen and NGOs.