Hello everyone! 🌻
It's Ana here, the last one standing from the oldest volunteering group of 2023!
It is official, I am leaving and this week was my last one after one year in Italy, volunteering with Vagamondo and later on cooperating with New Wellness and Parco Culturale.
My last task was about sharing my knowledge with high school students who are in their last year of school. Along with Ada and Jo, we talked about Erasmus+, the projects it offers and my experience throughout the year.
It feels good to spread the word! ✨
What can I say about this experience? I'm definitely not the same person as I was when I arrived. I learned more about cultures and their different paths in life: I guess one of the first things I learned was to valorise my passport, how hard it is for non-Europeans to come to Europe, and also how we, Europeans, take it for granted. I learned how to facilitate, and later, coordinate a project, which is my biggest accomplishment during this volunteering. I never thought I could do it, and do it successfully and just that changed how I envision myself, my self-confidence, and how I envision my professional career. And that led to something else I learned: more about the EU and what they invest for youth, more about Eramus+ (from the beginning to end, from logistics to facilitation), and more about my curiosity in life, a little seed that was planted and mixes the topics of social innovation and rural development.
I would say an experience like this volunteering can be very impactful in our being, and everyone who accepts the challenge needs to be aware of that. It's not about romanticising it and thinking it is the best experience because you will be happy all the time. On the contrary, it's impactful because you will feel a lot of different emotions and you need to deal with them, in a group or alone, far from family and friends, in a foreign country with a language that's not your native to express yourself. In the end, it's impossible not to go through a self-awareness journey.
My last words would be: I would do it all again if I could, even better if I was allowed!
I leave you with this amazing picture of the views of this region, a spot that I loved to come to and contemplate:
Take care and, please, dare!
Ana 🌻