2013 SU Update: 30 Volunteers travel to 2011 WU in Erzurum to gain Experience

KAZAN – On January 21st, 30 volunteers from Tatarstan will travel to Erzurum (Turkey), host city of the 25th Winter Universiade that will run from January 27th to February 6th.

The best Kazan 2013 volunteers that were selected within the Team 2013 Project will head to Turkey for the internship.

Team 2013: Season 1 kicked off on April 24th and finished on June 27th, 2010. Within eight contest weeks 13 volunteer teams performed different tasks: delivered presentations of the 2013 Summer Universiade at schools and universities, helped veterans, made video clips, created photo sets and assisted in the delivery of sporting events. Following the results of the Team 2013 Project two volunteer teams 20:13 and Light 4U were awarded the Erzurum 2011 internship.

For the last four months the volunteers have been taking a crash course in Turkish that was organized by the Kazan 2013 Executive Directorate. To facilitate training, the students were divided into two groups: Russian-speaking and Tatar-speaking, since Turkish comes easy to the latter due to language similarity.

Just prior to their departure to Turkey, on January 17-19, the volunteers were given a short training course. They enriched their experiences and gain skills in a wide variety of volunteer activities, cross-cultural communication, problem solving and pledged to follow the Volunteer Code of Conduct, while having team-building courses and role-playing games in English.

It is expected that within the 2011 Winter Universiade in Erzurum the Kazan 2013 volunteers will work as chaperones to the Russian national team.

(Source: Media Department of Kazan 2013 Executive Directorate)