Covid19 and the experience of MohBari

Last months have been weird for all of us.

Some have been stuck in what they were doing, some other have had no opportunity to continue doing their job.

Now things seem to be better and the situation in some places looks like evolving. Many activities have started again and people have a greater hope to return travelling again.

Many are wondering about “travelling” and what the fate of Erasmus + proects will be.

On this regard, I interviewed Eleonora and Isabella, the Founders of the Italian NGO “Moh Bari”, born in 2019 from two ex-volunteers who came back to their home country without forgetting their experiences and creating opportunities for young Italian people.

Tell us something about you in a few words

MOH – Mobility Opportunities Hub is a socio-cultural association in Bari, whose aim is to promote mobility among young people, to create synergies with local and European associations and to trace a link between social and artistic work.

Youth Mobility in Europe is our main focus. It has a positive impact on young people at various levels: personal, employability, European sentiment and tolerance towards diversity.

How did Coronavirus affect your job?

Covid-19 did not affect us a lot, since we continued to work as usual, remotely. We still do not have a physical office, so we always worked at home with our computers, without changing our habits (“Fun” fact: Isabella was blocked in Georgia for more than 1 month! And Eleonora was in Bari) :D We organised skype meetings and kept on working as usual. Maybe we could say that the Covid-19 had some psychological effect on our work. Because sometimes we personally felt unmotivated, without knowing how everything will go on and when we actually could go back to “normality” (even if that “normality” is still far and we have to get used to this idea).

Did you interrupt any project?

No, we did not because fortunately, we didn’t have any on-going project.

What about new projects? Were deadlines or the beginning of the accepted project postponed?

In light of the Coronavirus emergency, at the end of March, the European Commission has decided to postpone to 7 May 2020 the deadline, initially set at 30 April, for the submission of projects under the Erasmus+:Youth and European Solidarity Corps (ESC) programmes managed by the National Youth Agency. But for us, it did not make a big difference.

During the lockdown here in Italy we received the application’s results and we celebrated a lot since all of our projects we applied for were approved!! Unfortunately, we had to postpone all of them to 2021, because the planned activities were almost all for public festivals. The good side of this situation is that we have more time to plan everything perfectly and search for new opportunities for our association.

Thanks to MOHBari