A Lidia está a fazer Voluntariado Internacional em Portugal ao abrigo do programa Corpo Europeu de Solidariedade, no âmbito do projeto Citizenship Lab Volunteering, coordenado pela Rota Jovem e em parceria com a ILGA 🌍
Lê o testemunho da sua experiência 👇
"Hey, I'm Lidia a 23 years old spanish person from Cádiz, and I'm currently making a volunteer project in Lisbon (PT) since october. My volunteer activity is based in ILGA Association, a big LGBTIQ+ association in the center of Lisbon, that has some different areas but I'm concretely in the community center that they have.
I really like working there, in the community center, because I'm trully happy with the team of volunteers and workers that I usually work with. They make me feel valuable, trusted and an important part of the team. Apart from that, I also enjoy the fact of being in touch with people that attend the center, it makes very easy the fact of meeting new people, being in tuch with reality and lerning all the time. Also it's gratificating being able to organize and develope activities by my own, I feel like I have my own independency inside the teamwork. It's be a place I would definitely like to stay longer!
In terms of integration in Portugal, I feel like I didn't have like a big cultural shock because of living in country with a similar culture as the spanish one is. On the other hand, I gotta say that it is now, after some months, when I'm starting to meet more portuguese people. I feel like in this kind of projects you usually stick and hang around with other volunteers because they are usually the first people you meet and they are your comfort zone from the first moment, so its a little bit harder to meet locals, adding also the difficulty of generally unknowing the portuguese language.
Changing of topic... I would also like to speak about, obviously,travels and all the different opportunities that Lisbon, as a city, can give you in terms of the big variety of places you can go to hang around, have coffies, party, etc.
But also, I would like to say that despite of wanting to do a lot of stuff, around or out of Lisbon (or wherever city you are living), or even not wanting to have a super packed schedule, it's okay. You're not forced to be doing stuff all the time, there are many ways of enjoying this experience that doesn't require to be super active all the time.
What I want to say with this, and from the perspective of a person that had a few prejudices related to this kind of projects, is that is really suitable for a very large variety of people, because you trully will meet a huge variety of different people, in and inside the volunteer project.
In conclusion, I'm enjoying a lot the time here, eventhough I'm going through different personal and emotional stages, but I'm pretty sure all of this is included in the small letter of the agreement, haha.
And for the rest of the time I still have here I'm just hoping to keep on being as it's being for me, natural and diverse."
