1- Why did you decide to participate in a ESC project? Carlo: Since I had never had an opportunity to be a volunteer, I wanted to broaden my experience, better discovering the domain of associative and civic involvement while working in a multicultural environment, to contribute more to social initiatives. The ESC seemed like a great opportunity to do it, allowing participants to access several associations within this outlook in the EU. 2- Why did you choose Portugal and Casa da Horta? Previously to the ESC, I had already had the opportunity to live in Portugal through the Erasmus program, for study and for realizing an internship. In those months abroad I enjoyed my Portuguese life for several aspects that made me feel at home, like the climate, people’s openness and availability, the sea and others. I also already known the city of Porto because I was visiting it several times before my ESC project began. Therefore, I always loved the country, and the city of Porto in particular, and this justifies my quest for an ESC experience there. Casa da Horta (CdH) jumped out as a chance to fulfil my wish to move back to Portugal and to contribute to the projects CdH is involved in. Since I share the main values of the association, I wanted to contribute to its overall activities. 3- How was your general experience in Casa da Horta (adaptation phase, tasks/activities, time management, Portuguese learning)? It didn’t take me much time to get into the association and its non-hierarchical structure, since I have always tried to approach life in that way. I just needed a little bit to realize the main principles of the place and how the tasks and activities were divided. Once I got familiar with it time management became more organic and natural and stayed so until the end. Overall, after a month everything started to get smoother, the Portuguese language as well, that I studied before, but that I needed to practice again after almost one year out of the country. The activities and tasks during my experience were numerous I participated in projects linked with gardening, music, cinema, theatre, restaurant and bar management, tourism, marketing and more. The staff of CdH was helpful in many ways and this supported the overall experience. It was positive, productive and life-changing. 4- Which were the most difficult moments? The several activities I have just mentioned and the freedom I mention hereafter were somehow challenging because this also required a big degree of ductility and elasticity towards the different tasks, this brought some stress in some moments of the year, but I am aware this is a natural part of many experiences like this. For sure doing an ESC experience during Covid-19 also brought some challenges in terms of rules to respect, but this is not only related to CdH since it affected people lives in many ways inside and outside the association. Anyway, we tried to support each other between volunteers and members of the association. Winter was short, hopefully! 5- Which was the most positive(s) aspect(s)? The volunteers can enjoy a lot of freedom in CdH, having the opportunity to try many different activities, from gardening to social work to the online job and then choose their priorities over them. I enjoyed these open possibilities a lot, as it was always very dynamic and diverse, and it taught me a lot of different things, enabled me to gain new skills and also – meet new people inside and outside the association’s network. Living such an experience was a great way to enter Porto’s society and dynamics overall and to easily integrate into the city with a much faster pace compared to other experiences such as the Erasmus at the university I previously had. 6- Which advice would you give to those who want to volunteer under the ESC program? Choose the hosting organisation carefully – if it meets your needs, of what you want to do and try during this experience. Meet the people from the organisation before starting your ESC if possible – it will help you with your choice and can help with your further experience. And be open towards the colleagues and the society around you, any association is based and acts in a living space, do not forget that it contains many energies and many stimuli you can get. Do not focus only on the association you choose, that’s your way of approaching and relating with the world you visit, not your world itself. Try to practice languages, the free time the ESC allows is a great opportunity to focus on personal development activities and projects.
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Hey! I am Sebastian and I will stay here for a while I come from crazy country named Poland, wich you might know there’s pretty good food, wonderful mountains or land of lakes and hospitalible people. If you didn’t know about those things, don’t worry, I hope to share witch you some of my experience of livimg there I’m a little bit different, because of my disability. I’m visually impaired guy, wich means, that I have some problems with remembering faces! However, it didn’t stop me from working, travelling and studying. Previously I have been working as massage teraphist, but I changed my occupation - I was studying journalism and worked as redactor, copywriter and web analytic. I also have benn participating in bunch of Erasmus + youth exchanges, so I was travelimg quite a lot, it really helped me witch breaking my limits and cross new borders. I decided to came here, because I wanted to make some change in my life and also to make a little difference to this world. I want to encourage people with disabilities to be more active, to travel more and be among the people. Also I want to get people more aware about disabilities. I will perform some kind of presentations to show how life of blind person look like. I also want to create some more stuff in the sphere of culture, such as movie projections, film scenes analyses and organizing public events. See you at Casa da Horta! |