For the ones that read my introduction here in Steemit, I would like write about my previous and future volunteering experiences. But before starting, I want to talk about the type of volunteering I am doing.
On 2013 I got accepted to an European Volunteer Service project in Spain funded by EU. It was basicly a scholarship covers all my travel and accomodation expences during 9 months in exchange of working six hours a day in an association. During that summer I took part in 6 workcamps. First I want to explain what is a workcamp.
(lots of people told me that it sounds like concentration camp, IT IS NOT!!!!!)
The exact definiton : “A voluntary camp, or work camp, is a community work project carried out by a group of between 5 and 24 volunteers of different nationalities during a period of between 1 and 3 weeks.”
European Youth portal explains it like this : “A work camp is a different way to spend your summer holidays, doing volunteering work of social interest with young people from different countries.
There are different types of work depending on the task to carry on: archaeology, restoration of monuments, environmental protection, community work, etc. Duration varies in each case, although the minimum of time is usually two weeks. Price oscillates according to the country, modality and length of the stay. Participants must pay for their travel tickets, whereas the organizing entity will pay for accommodation and meals. The camps are usually for young people older than 18, but some organizations have also for teenagers over 15.”
In my words, young people from different countries coming to one place to work voluntarily (six hours everyday except weekends) and living in a house, camping, school, gym or a place that is given by the townhalls or the associations that are organising those camps. The food is also provided by them.
In those workcamps my task was to be the leader of the group which consists the arrangement of the work hours, communication with the townhalls, organisation of the free time activities etc.
At the beginning, before starting to my camp adventure, I wasn't understanding the concept. Imagine, the people are coming to a tiny town in the middle of nowhere in Spain to work. They are paying their travel tickets by themselves and also a fee to their sending organisations. So what is the benefit of working generally in the really tough fields, six hours a day under the sun? I mean I know being useful, helping people but they could do it in their country without paying lots of fees.
I knew the benefit just after finisihing my very first camp while I was dealing with my trauma. Yes, I was having a week of depression after each camp. And what was the reason? I was missing that shitty work that we were all complaining about and of course the most important one was I was missing all these people that I was living together and sharing my food for tho weeks. I was missing to listen their advantures, learn about theirs cultures, tasting their food that they brought from their countries. I was remembering every silly moment we had during the camp and smiling by myself.
Yes and there is this of course this benfit which is much more important than the one that I told you; to be useful for the society, doing something good and helping the people.
However, the human kind is selfish. Every single thing that we do (even if its helpful and useful for someone) in some point it is for ourselves. Why do you volunteer? Because you want to feel yourself useful. “YOU WANT” “YOURSELF” It is the moment that you feel yourself a good person it the selfishness of the volunteering so lets be honest and say that we are doing good stuff for other people but we are also doing it for ourselves.
To sum up, the young people spend their summers for volunteering in the foreign coutries to feel themselves useful, to get to know the culture of the country that they go, to meet with new people from different cultures and have new friends, to learn how to be responsible and survive by themselves out of their comfort zones.
I assume that I am doing every workcamp and other volunteering project at first for myself. Because I love to help and I love to meet with new people from the other cultures.
And why would you volunteer?
I will talk about the workcamps that I did with lots of details in my future posts; the river cleaning workcamp, the donkey caravan , archeological excavations, graffiti workcamps and much more…
Stay tuned!
