Transcript for asen dimitrov name (on tape/card): Dimitrov Sit Down Interview 1

Ah, Tsveti, I volunteer a lot and all the time, so instead of my most recent volunteering experience, I’d rather they you about my most significant volunteering experience. It is also a non-traditional type of volunteering experience, but still volunteering.

In the summer of 2012 I was appointed Bulgarian Youth Delegate to the United Nations. Although this way I became a formal member of the Bulgarian mission in New York, this is an unpaid position and youth delegates don’t enter into labor relations. I even had to cover a good part of my expenses.

So, I represented the Republic of Bulgaria before the Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee of the General Assembly of the United Nations in which I drafted the Bulgarian speech and spoke at the opening of the Committee, I participated in informal consultations on resolutions, and so on. What is more interesting, this position carried a one-year mandate, only one month of which I spent in New York. During the rest of the time, I travelled around the country, met youngsters, organized educational events for them, and also worked for the strengthening of the Youth Delegate program in Bulgaria and other countries. It’s a huge part of the task. Not many countries have it. Bulgaria is one of the first countries to have it. It was imported as well.

But I won’t be able to give a full description of the idea within several minutes and I know you have a little bit several more questions to ask.

02:06 (Yes! Well, my next question would be why did you decide to do it in the first place?)

Why did I decide? In this case, in this particular case it was quite clear that I will have some considerable opportunities for making an impact – on national politics, on the thinking about development problems in Bulgaria, especially among the young people in the country. Volunteering usually takes place in smaller scale, at least this is the most popular form of volunteering. Helping landscaping the city in the neighborhood or teaching kids English or something of sort, but volunteers in general volunteering is about helping others live better, to my understanding… building a better living environment, including better relations between the people. Volunteering is also about self-fulfillment, and this is particularly true when you see your efforts giving results. For example, at the United Nations, all youth delegates pushed together for a different wording in one resolution in strengthening of the efforts to decrease the violence against women. What was initially drafted in this resolution was inscribed as just women. We wanted to spell this out as “young women and girls”. This might seem a minor change, but when it comes to policy making at the UN level, this is a huge step. Why? Because we are now shifting the efforts for decreasing violence against women from working with families, grown up women, to working with adolescents, young girls – addressing the roots of the problems. And this is just an example of volunteering in policy making, but of course as I mentioned, volunteering could be helping the kids in the Blagoevgrad orphanage learn English for example as our Better Community club used to do. And volunteering still in any form is about helping others, helping all of us live better. ! And you learn a lot by volunteering as well.

04:25 (Yeah, I completely agree with you on this. And thank you so much for sharing. I’m sure that there is a lot more, but right now I’d like to ask you my final question and that is do you have any plans to do any volunteer work in the future. I know that you are a very buy man who is still involved in the UN even though you’re not the active delegate right now, but you’re still interested in it. But still, are you considering taking part in another volunteer project like this or a different one?)

Of this scale - probably I won’t be able to do soon, but definitely yes. Many different smaller kind initiatives, smaller and I think about starting them tomorrow.

05:16 (Oh that is great!)

Continuing them tomorrow, I must say.

05:20 (Well, I’m sure we’ll be expecting a lot of lecturers coming to AUBG this semester.)

Oh yes! I’m sorry for interrupting, because you’ll be posting this online. There’s an initiative by the Atlantic club of Bulgaria to briefly train young people of any age and let them go teach Roma kids and grown-ups use technology – mobile phones, laptops, personal computers, and so on. So I’ll be soon sending information across the campus for this volunteering opportunity and I will personally take part in it.

06:02 (I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot from you this semester and the next semester and – well, as long as you’re here. So thank you very much for being my first interviewee and I’m sure this is a very good start for my blog.)