Jovana Cedomirovic was a part of SIA Serbia volunteers team. During the four-month period she has shown a tremendous passion and dedication and has certainly improved the project’s visibility in Serbia. She believes that volunteering is an opportunity to learn about yourself and your abilities, meet interesting people and learn something new each day.

How did you become a part of Social Impact Award?

Due to the fact that I had a some free time, I looked for new volunteering opportunities. One day, I found out about an opportunity to volunteer on a project that involves social entrepreneurship. I was very curious to know how the entrepreneurship world actually works and I decided to apply. After a few days I was invited for an interview. I honestly did not expect that my application will even be reviewed. A couple of days after the interviews, I received an email saying that they are happy to announce that I will be part of their team as volunteer.  I was so happy that I got the opportunity to learn and to get introduced to the world of social entrepreneurship. Soon we had a first work meeting and so it all began. 🙂

What has been your role in the project?

I was part of the communication team. Therefore my assignment has been communication with media and via social media channels. I was in charge of getting important announcements shared via media, websites and on social media networks. This meant that I had to communicate and address on daily basis a large number of people. Also I was taking care of communication with external press partners, such as newspapers, TV and radios. Even though this was my primary task, I was participant on few different workshops in Belgrade and other cities because we were sharing our tasks as a team.

Because of all of this, I had a chance to see what is happening behind the scene in a project as big as this one is. So, not only have I gained experience in the field of communications, but I have also learned a bit about event and project management.

You also learned more about social entrepreneurship. How do you plan to use this knowledge? Are you thinking of becoming a social entrepreneur yourself one day?

I am planning to stay in Serbia and try to work on my skills and knowledge that will help me to better understand social entrepreneurship. At the beginning of the project, I had a chance to see people developing their ideas and building projects out of them. Seeing people who notice the issues in the society and work towards solving them was quite impressive for me. Things like that make you think about your steps, your ideas and how you can influence the world you live in. Those are the things that I had a chance to see during my volunteering experience, and I hope one day I will take steps that will impact our society in a better way too.

Have you gained some skills that will be important for your future career? 

I had a chance to do the things I love and I am most interested in, which is in the field of communications. However, I gained more than that. The most important thing that you can have during your volunteering experience is to grow as an individual, while being a part of the team. I loved having the freedom to ask anything I was unsure about, which only enabled me to learn more and perform better. I was working with a great project team, a sort of workaholics, who were working day and night in order to create a better society for all of us. During the time I was working with those people, while I was looking how they work and how passionate they are, I got motivated to do the same. I had the chance to learn how to start challenging myself, especially in those areas I never had a chance to work before. When I take a look at the past few months, all of those moments, minutes, and hours I spent working on SIA – it was completely worth it.

Volunteering is becoming increasingly popular among young people, but there are still those who see it as “free work labor”. What message would you send to them?

„Volunteering is developing yourself without any cost. Long term looking, that is something that is for free but most expensive and valuable thing you can do for yourself.“

Everything that we go through, each experience we get, each person we had a chance to meet – influence who we are now. I think that everyone of who went through volunteering experience knows that decision made his or hers future better. I think that volunteering helps you develop your skills and knowledge in practice, which make us aware of who we are and what we can do. I truly believe that volunteering makes our society a better place to live. Besides, meeting new people and learning something new cannot be a bad thing.

My message for all young people would be that they should invest time in themselves and use all the opportunities in front of them, especially those free of charge but priceless for our lives. Volunteering brings you a different view on the world!