"In June 2011, I went to a project in the Alpine region
of northern Italy as part of my summer break from uni. For 2 weeks I lived on a
mountain with 10 other volunteers, from countries including Turkey, Japan and
South Korea. I was the only Brit and I loved it! I really got to know about
what life is like in countries I’ve not yet been lucky enough to visit, and I
made some friends for life. It was an exhausting two weeks – we were over 1000m
above sea level, and cars could only get us up as far as 600m. But it was also
really good fun - in the evenings we played games, cooked dinner together, and
watched the stars. At the weekend we visited the local city, had a homemade
Italian lunch, and went to a local festival.
The project involved monitoring the flora and fauna in the
area. We took photos and made sketches of the flowers; caught butterflies in
order to identify them before setting them free; and we set humane traps to see
what mice are living on the mountain. That last one involved some very early mornings,
and seeing the sunrise was wonderful. To be honest, it didn’t feel like work –
we felt lucky to be in such a beautiful part of the world. It wasn’t a very
long project but we knew we were making a difference – all that the Italian
organisation needed was for a group of people to take some time to survey the
mountainside, a task too big for the team of just 3 who work in the park. Our
efforts made it into the local newspaper! It was an experience I’ll never
forget, and I’m so pleased I was a part of it."
The three months I spent volunteering a Villa Buri can be
summed up in one sentence: Always expect the unexpected. I arrived in Verona
having very little idea of what I would be doing, and very few expectations. My
first impression of the villa and the park was that it was a beautiful, calm
place. The villa is nestled in a bend of
the River Adige, a few miles from the
centre of Verona, surrounded by a large park. I joined two other
international volunteers and worked with the local Italian team to look after
the park.
The international volunteers were three girls, but when I
arrived the first surprise was that only one of the other girls had turned up:
Agnes from Sweden. We lived in a small house by the main gate of the villa.
Part of our job was to open and close the villa gates. The second surprise when
we started work the next morning was that although the working language of the
project was nominally English, everyone spoke in Italian. So my Italian
improved faster than I would have believed possible. It is amazing what you can
learn when you really need to!
The first job Agnes and I were given was to feed the
kittens. It turned out that Villa Buri was home to many stray cats and these
kittens had been abandoned in the park. I spent the rest of my stay putting out
multiple bowls of cat food every day.
One of our other regular tasks was to empty the rubbish bins
in the park, and sort out the things that could be recycled, i.e. metal,
plastic, cardboard and glass. This was an occasionally unpleasant job, but it
was also oddly fascinating. We were very confused by the people who left at
least ten kilos of grapes in the bins over the course of about three weeks. We
also planted an awful lot of miniature winter vegetables in the Orto.
In September we spent a lot of time pruning trees,
collecting seeds and creating new flower beds. I discovered that hawthorn was
vicious, but not as vicious as the mosquitoes. Agnes counted the bites on her
leg one day, and found she had over 60. When we discovered some fly swats in
the back of a cupboard and could go mosquito hunting you have never seen two
happier people! One of the other highlights was the local Gelateria – we went
at least three times a week.
The next surprise came not in the form of
stray animals, but stray people. Five Ethiopian girls came to stay at Villa
Buri. They were refugees from Libya, having moved there to escape famine in
their
native land and then fled Libya when the war started there.
We invited the girls to come and work with us hoping it would help them to
improve their non-existent Italian. Communication was interesting, as only one
of them spoke a little English and none of them really spoke any Italian. Most
of what need to be said could be communicated by a combination of demonstration
and mime. This occasionally made you look pretty silly, but was surprisingly
effective. The girls were always willing to get stuck into any task and were
great fun, always ready with a smile.
In October the weather changed from the warm sunshine we had
been enjoying to become cooler and foggier. We spent more time weeding the Orto
Botanico, the Villa's large herb garden. The vegetable garden also had to be
tidied up for the winter and the remaining fruit and vegetables harvested. This
was also the season for the kiwi and kaki (persimmons) of which we had
hundreds. We even took a wheelbarrow round the streets to try selling them to
the neighbours!
By November the weather took on a wintry edge. With the cold
weather, the third international volunteer finally arrived, Katharina from
Germany. The weather also meant we spent more time indoors, doing jobs like
sewing curtains and painting furniture in an effort to make our little house
even cosier for the next volunteers. We also went to help harvest the olives at
Don Calabria, a community for men with mental health issues.
At the beginning of December it was time to leave Villa Buri. It was an unforgettable
experience. The language barrier was often challenging, as was adjusting to a
much slower pace of life. But I learnt many new skills: how to grow and care
for many kinds of herbs and vegetables, how to cook proper Italian food and
that you can have an entire conversation with a few words. I will miss having
the peace and beauty of the park right on the doorstep, and the warmth of the
people I met there. And remember: Always expect the unexpected!
After
spending about 2 weeks visiting major cities in Japan, I left the main island
of Honshu for Hokkaido. Destination? Onuma Quasi-National Park (大沼国定公園, Onuma Kokutei Kouen), at the
southernmost tip of the island, near Hakodate city (函館). The aim of the workcamp? 1 ½ weeks of mostly environmental work.
Along with six other volunteers (two of them Japanese and the rest
international), we built rafts to depollute water and cut some plants for
forestry work. I did not know much about environmental work before this
workcamp. Eighteen rafts and some tree-cutting later, here is what I learned:
1.Building rafts:
It may seem strange just hearing about it, but our main work was to build rafts
to depollute lake water. Explanation: Onuma Park has three lakes. Two of them,
Lake Onuma and Lake Konuma (大沼 and 小沼) are quite polluted. Visibility of
the water is low, some species have become extinct; there is little underwater
life in general. At first, people thought this was due to man-made pollution.
However, they soon realized that it was caused by intensive agriculture and
animal grazing instead. Worrying about the long-term consequences of this
process, a university professor decided to design a project to protect the
lakes.
·Why are the lakes important locally? They are vital to agriculture, as they provide
water for irrigation. They mean a lot to the people because the national park
is quite a beautiful area and home to many species of plants and animals.
Tourism is also one of the main activities that people live off of.
·Why was it important to set up this project? Other than the local degradation
aspect, this pollution problem has a wider impact. The lake water goes into the
sea. Not interfering at the root of the problem would mean spreading the
pollution to other places. On the other hand, solving the pollution problem
early causes less trouble to other people. The rafts thus represent a sustainable
means to prevent further pollution.
·How do the rafts
help to depollute?The rafts improve the visibility of the water
so that underwater life can redevelop. Their main function is to trap algae
floating on the surface of the water into a net. By bringing in more light,
there is more underwater oxygen production, and the water becomes a more
habitable space. Roots and dirt are also placed on top of the rafts, so that
new plants can grow and wildlife is once again attracted to the lake.(Esthetically, I thought it had a third
advantage of making the rafts become virtually invisible. Ducks seemed to like
them as well, as they made their nests on the rafts.)
·Do they work?From what is known, they do seem to have a
positive impact on the lakes. According to a series of recent surveys, Onuma
Lake has been gaining on average 20 cm per year in visibility (80 cm visibility
in 2007, 120 cm in 2009.)
Building rafts
2.Cutting plants:
For two days, we participated in another activity, aimed at protecting the
forest (rather than the lakes) of the park. We worked with the forest rangers
of Onuma to clear paths in one area of the park. Like 40 other percent of
forests in Japan, the forest in Onuma Park is man-made, rather than natural.
The forest rangers are responsible for its conservation, and aim to restore it
to a natural forest state over a period of about 100 years. Clearing the paths
helps them patrol the forest. Our work meant simply cutting unwanted plants,
but it also had the effect of protecting special species from parasite plants.
(Potential damage can come from animals or other plants, if those use all the
nutrients in the soil or monopolize all of the available sunlight).This work was therefore more straightforward
than the raft-making, but it was also more physically demanding: we worked our
way by going slowly uphill and the forest was very humid.
Other activities: Towards the end of the workcamp, we took part in a third activity,
with a cultural focus. We had the chance of helping at an o-matsuri (お祭り), a Japanese festival.It was a sort of o-Bon (お盆) matsuri, a festival held to remember and celebrate the dead. Families
write the names of their dead on lanterns and put them on the lake to float.
The spirits of the dead are supposed to be attracted to these lights and follow
them. In Japan, this festival is generally held in early July or early August;
however, because of tourism issues in Onuma, the local government decided to
have it at a different time.It was
touching to see it take place, especially because of the earthquake and tsunami
which happened in March.
As a group,
we wanted to make the most of the festival, therefore we unanimously decided to
attend it while wearing yukata (浴衣). Yukatas are
a sort of summer kimono that people (both men and women) wear for the
festivals. (They can also be worn on a daily basis, generally by the elderly,
and the less fancy ones can be used to sleep in). We wore them for the lantern ceremony,
to enjoy the o-matsuri and to watch hanabi (花火, literally ‘flowery fire’), the fireworks.
The
o-matsuri and wearing the yukata were the cultural highlight to this workcamp.
However, they were not the only cultural experience we had; we were able to
experience a lot more. We slept on futons (布団), in the traditional style, ate on a traditional low table (without
chairs), and tried some local specialties. While touring the village upon our
arrival, we had free o-dango (お団子), a typical
Japanese sweet. We also tried local ice cream and cheese, as milk is also
renowned in the area. 抹茶ソフトクレムはおいしいです !
(Matcha sofuto kuremuwa oishi desu!,Matcha –Japanese traditional green tea- ice
cream is delicious!) Last but not least, we tastedジンギスカン (Jingisu
Kan), a kind of dish with a special meat named after… the warrior! (I think
it was named as such in an attempt to mock him.)
Conclusion: This workcamp was a very intense 10 days where
we were able to experience many things. The aim of the workcamp was
well-explained to us. We could understand the type of work we were doing and
why we were doing it. We were also treated very kindly by the people we worked
with and there was an excellent atmosphere within our group. This made the
activities interesting and enjoyable. I did have some doubts about the
effectiveness of our work at some point, but I do feel like it was important in
the end, and that I have gained a lot from this workcamp. It will remain an
amazing memory. 皆、ありがとうございました ! (Minna, arigatou gozaimashita; thank you so much everyone!)
“If you think
you are too small to make a change, then you’ve never slept in a closed room
with a mosquito”.African
Proverb
I’ve
been asked by Concordia UK
to write about my experience as a volunteer of the ROBBS Bursary Programme. I
am a member of Subir al Sur, an Argentine organisation that works in the
strengthening of youth groups in different parts in Argentina, by promoting local and
international volunteering. It is hard to use words to describe the whole
month, but to sum it up I can definitely say: AMAZING! I warn you, reader, this
article will be EXTREMELY boring for those who like to read about terrible news
or poor and sad experiences, for it will be loaded of POSITIVE adjectives in
such an amount that you will start doubting whether everything happened for
real or it was just a very pretty dream. Well, let me tell you, and I have
witnesses, that this month was enough time to make a change, at least in myself,
and this is real, for sure.
My
first experience was at MoulsecoombPrimary School and MoulsecoombForestGarden and Wildlife
Project. We were eight volunteers and a camp leader participating in a 15-day
workcamp, sleeping in the School’s gym, joining the children’s classrooms and
working in the CommunityGarden. Well, Moulsecoomb
is supposed to be a “deprived area” inside Brighton and Hove,
and I could tell that there are many problems such as violence, drug abuse,
alcoholism, etc, underneath the beauty of the streets and the important
Universities. Nevertheless, I don’t know if it’s because of my extreme optimism
or the fact that I come from a country where “deprived areas” are areas where
there are not even basic public services, but Moulsecoomb for me is a diamond
in the rough. I have to say that the Primary School’s way of teaching, their
willingness to transmit to the children the importance of communication, the
expression of their opinions and feelings, the relevance of working with and
for the community, and actually doing it, teaching it by giving the example,
was inspiring to see. Everyone I met working at the Primary School and the CommunityGarden is committed to the community and
is working to make the best out of Moulsecoomb, mainly for the children that
live there. All the School and Community Garden’s Staff members and volunteers
are so involved with their community and so confident of the fact that the only
way of dealing with harsh environments is working together towards a different
and better future, which results in stimulating and exciting everyone that
joins the project.
During
my second weekend in UK,
Concordia invited me to the North-South Training that is held every year for
volunteers that will participate in projects on the South part of the world,
and for people interested in joining some of these projects eventually. It was
an intense weekend where I got to meet many people with different backgrounds
but two things in common: they were all from the UK, and all had been wondering
about the idea of “change” in a particular way: by volunteering somewhere far
from their home country. “Change”, I mean, in a wide and subjective form and
definition; “change” conceived in a different way for every different
individual. In this sense, it may mean an internal change, a social or a political
change, etc. It was important to get to know what their fears and expectations
are before leaving to their projects, so as to work on them before they arrive
to Argentina.
The training is very successful in raising questions that everyone should ask
themselves before joining a North-South project: What does being a volunteer
mean?, How am I going to deal with cultural differences? If any conflict
arises, how am I going to cope with it? How do I think I will be feeling
outside my comfort zone? Am I willing to learn from other cultures? These
questions help the volunteer reflect upon important matters and situations that
may happen during a project. The awareness that naturally comes with the
questions help the volunteer be more prepared for the trip.
The
ROBBS Programme is not only a volunteering programme, but has another important
objective that is getting to know other organisations in the UK that promote
international volunteering, in the way Concordia and Subir al Sur promote it, as
an intercultural experience. That is why Concordia sent me to London
to meet Nigel from VAP UK,
and to Cardiff,
to meet the members of UNA Exchange. This experience was enriching in many
ways, but mainly in an institutional level. I got to interview members of
organisations that work in a similar way as we do in Argentina, and was able to exchange
experiences and information, for both of us to improve.
Regina volunteering in Wales
In
Wales,
I was invited to take part of a weekend project in the valley, in a place
called Abercynon. This project was very different from what I had experienced
before, due to the fact that we were only two volunteers and one coordinator,
working in a CommunityGarden, together with its
manager and his helpers. It was a hard-working weekend, where I learnt to make
a fence, cleared weed from an area full of growing trees, dug a pipe trench and
carried 20 wheel barrels loaded with soil to cover the trench to protect the
pipe. But as tiring as it sounds the satisfaction of doing it and actually seeing
the results of such hard work was more than enough to compensate the effort. It
was a beautiful project and I enjoyed it so much!
There
are many, many things unsaid in this short article but I thought that the best
way of describing my experience was by telling a bit about the different
projects and people I met thanks to the Programme. I want to make a special
mention to Concordia’s Team for the support they gave me from the very
beginning and their constant motivation. I will be forever grateful!
If
someone is lucky enough to join this programme, I would suggest they seize
every day, knowing that every minute is important to enjoy and learn from the
inspiring people they will meet during the trip and to let the beauty of the
places penetrate them. Everything happens so fast! And you never know how far
the impact of your presence in the projects goes and how deep your footprint on
someone’s heart steps. It is definitely worthwhile making the best out of the
experience, because if you think you are too small to make a difference, then
you never slept in a closed room with a mosquito.
and a Romanian girl. It's like gaining three sisters over night!!"
I'm settling into EVS life quickly :-) So much has happened since I left England on Thursday!!
I'm living with 8 other people in a small flat in the City Centre. The flat is in a small square near to the train and bus station. We are lucky because our room has a balconary that overlooks the square.
I'm sharing a room with a German, Spanish and a Romanian girl. It's like gaining three sisters over night!! It's ok at the moment, but I never seen to get a minute to myself. The other girls are really nice and helpful. We also share the flat with a French guy and four guys from Turkey (they keep themselves to themselves).
On Friday I spend the day unpacking and having a look around the City. It is very pretty. I can't take photos because my camera broke the night before I left :-( In the evening, all of the EVS volunteers were invited to a language student's home for dinner. The food was really good. We had a dish made with pork, egg, potatoes and spices, a mixed salad with Greek dressing and another dish made with Turkey, potatoes and lots of spices. For pudding, we had pancakes and a strange dish made of cookies, sour cream, sugar and jelly.
On my birthday, the girls made me breakfast in bed which was so sweet :-) Later, we went to a football match with some of the boys from the other flat (they have been in Hungary for eight months). It was so cold that my bones were frozen! In the evening we went to a local bar. There is no real night life in the City. There are three or four bars and one small nightclub. Anyway, two random guys gave us a massive cream and chocolate cake!! It was amazing!!
Today was my first day working at the office. It was manic because the organisation has just moved from an office across the road. Today was the opening ceremony. I also went to my first two England lessons. It was really relaxed and informal. The English teacher chooses a topic and we talk to the students about it. So today we talked about the different rules and customs in each of our home countries (England, Italy, Spain and Romanian). The students were really shy and didn't want to talk very much.
Everybody I have met so far in Hungary has been very friendly and helpful. The hardest thing to cope with at the moment is communication. A lot of the others can speak English. However, they find it hard to understand my accent. I didn't realise that I speak so fast when I’m at home!! Robbie seems to understand me the best. He is from Romanian and speaks five languages fluently!! I think that my English will get worse this year!! It's strange to listen to so many lanuages at the same time!
"I will never forget trying to teach three teenagers how to sew with a few words and a lot of hand gestures."
EVS involved a lot of firsts for me; it was the first time I had travelled outside the UK alone, the first time I took a night train, the first time I had lived in another country, the first time I had seen mountains. One of the greatest parts of my EVS experience was that these first time experiences did not end when I arrived at the project but they continued up until the very end. I feel every part of me was touched and changed somehow by my time as a volunteer; from allowing me to become more conscious of the resources we can take for granted in British society todayto bringing bigger concepts further to my attention such as the role of consumerism and the problem of climate change.
I volunteered for 9 months in France at a centre accueil called Vaunières, meaning Black Valley, which is hidden away at 2,500 meters altitude in the French Alps. The village hosts a variety of people including groups of school children, teenagers with social problems, international workcamps and passing mountain hikers. During the summer months there was often large numbers of visitors, sometimes reaching around the one hundred mark.
It is a tiny village that dates back to the twelfth century and it is isolated in a way that is quite hard to comprehend in today's world of modern connections. It took me a while to adjust to this solitude but now I am incredibly grateful that I was able to experience such a different way of life during my EVS.My daily life as a volunteer changed and evolved during my time at Vaunieres with relation to what groups were visiting.
During the quiet months of spring we were often just the 6 volunteers and so our time was occupied with workshops to develop Vaunieres; plastering the new library space, working on the garden, painting and decorating. As the warmer weather brought more visitors my role became more of a host - welcoming, cooking and cleaning but there was also time to participate in the collective workshops. This provided a beautiful opportunity to share with all the different people staying in the project and helped to breakdown some of the boundaries created by the language barrier. I will never forget trying to teach three teenagers how to sew with a few words and a lot of hand gestures.
A special part of Vaunieres is the artistic and alternative people it seems to attract and a huge part of my EVS experience was the volunteers and the people I shared my time with. I met many inspiring people that I hope to keep contact with forever. When the summer arrived so did the first international workcamps and festivals. There were movie nights, pizza nights, party nights, games nights, international meals, nights sleeping under stars and weekends away. The autumn brought a new, colourful, beauty and a new calm in terms of numbers. But as other long-term volunteers left and the new group arrived I found myself with a lot more responsibilities. I helped to welcome the new volunteers into their new roles and helped organise the final international workcamp of the year. It was perhaps the most challenging part of my whole time as a volunteer in terms of work-load and in many ways a very good way to finish. I am able to now say with confidence, I can speak French, I can drive on the right-side of the road, I can be a leader and I can say no when it gets too much. Of course there were times when things felt too difficult and times when I just wanted to come home and have a hug from my Mum. Sometimes the language barrier felt very isolating and I became quite homesick. But I wouldn’t change a thing. The hard times are an important part of the experience and really enable you to become aware of your own limits and strengths.
If you are reading this because you are contemplating becoming an EVS volunteer then I hope my story gives you the reassurance you are searching for. It is such an amazing opportunity and a real privilege to be able to live in another country and immerse yourself in another culture. It gives you time both to discover yourself and, in my experience at least, provides an opportunity to find many new possibilities for the future and a chance to meet many wonderful people. Also, there is always that guiding hand of Concordia behind you if you run into any problems.
If you are reading this because you are contemplating volunteering at Vaunières, I would whole heartedly encourage you too. There are not many places where you can feel so disconnected from the pressures of modern consumerism yet still be immersed in all the beauty of human potential. It is a magic place. Just remember to bring a good book and maybe some knitting to help pass those cold winter nights….
Concordia's ex EVS volunteer Joe who went to Austria tells all about last weekend's EVS Final Evaluation Seminar in Bradford
The seminar was great - there was a big group of participants (I would estimate somewhere around 35 people) but the trainers did a great job of making sure everyone got to know each other. It was great to meet so many other volunteers and hear about their projects and their experiences abroad. In my experience EVS volunteers also tend to be really interesting and fun people to spend time with, and this seminar was no exception. In terms of the seminar itself - my EVS finished over a year ago and I've been busy with plenty of other things since then, so I was unsure if it would be helpful for me to attend an evaluation meeting so long after the end of my project. However despite the late date I actually found it really helpful to spend some time looking back at my experiences of Austria and what I learnt while I was there, and reflecting on how EVS has impacted on me and my plans for the future. We also received information about further mobility opportunities offered by the other strands of the European Commission's life-long learning programme, such as Leonardo or Grundtvig, which I will definitely be looking into! In short it was a great weekend and definitely worth taking part in.
It is unsurprisingly difficult to know where to start. With 6 months of time already having trickled by there is obviously too much to say… But for a general overview of my time so far, EVS in Iceland has meant…….
“Workcamps” with international volunteers around the different parts of Iceland, learning to drive a tractor, discovering the magic of Icelandic turf houses and turf as a building material, sleeping outside in the summer night sun (no darkness!), staying inside in the winter darkness (too much darkness!), planting trees, herding hundreds of sheep, learning how to milk a cow, seeing the northern lights, eating cured shark, cleaning the coast and building furniture from the driftwood, discovering the Icelandic Sagas and beliefs in hidden people and elves, building a children’s playground, organising and leading a bicycle camp around the south of the country, making a vegetable patch and greenhouse, frosty mornings, sitting in “hot pots” and hot rivers (a favourite Icelandic past time), often seeing more animals than people on a daily basis, alien landscapes and lava fields, huge open horizons,fishing, never having the same day repeated,painting, learning how to build a shelter with just wood and rope (no nails!), glaciers, volcanoes, sleeping in bunk beds, hiking, always cooking in huge quantities, strange dentist visit (they have TVs on the ceiling!), new people, new ideas, new recipes, lots of energy, tiredness, silent landscapes, noisy houses,and the strongest WIND.
My hosting organisation’s website proudly bears the moto ‘Everybody is other in another way’. I like this sentiment, a lot, it summarises perfectly how it feels to be here. The language barrier, interacting with the disabled residents, how everything is different yet oddly fits together to make somewhere I feel I can call home. My first two months have gone so fast it feels like I finished hanging my photos on the wall of my room only yesterday, yet when I think of the things I’ve done and the progress we have made it feels like I’ve been here my whole life. The first few weeks were all about guided tours around our new lives and the paperwork to suit, but as the days marched on we soon found ourselves making friends and finding novel ways of communicating with the world around us.
For those who don’t know, Hungarian is an isolated language which contains many unnecessarily long words and bears no real resemblance to any western European language. This coupled with the fact English is not often phonetic makes remembering how to pronounce things almost impossible and as such I am sceptical that I will ever become proficient but I will endeavour to continue trying. Another hindrance is the pesky English accent I own as, when we go round the room practising pronunciation, the Germans get a big thumbs up, the Dutch make a reasonable attempt and I get a 'well at least you tried' kind of look.
The first word I mastered was, of course, thank you, as this knowledge alone can, with the assistance of lots of hand gestures, get you pretty much anything you want. Next I memorised the days of the week and the words 'open' and 'closed' so I could read the opening hours of all the shops and the local outdoor swimming pool. Since then my vocabulary has become a lot more eclectic as it has been driven primarily by the autistic people we assist. Colours were fairly easy to remember due to the extensive drilling which comes with overplaying Jenga and colouring in picture books. Next I progressed onto the phrase 'a lot of red tomatoes' which evolved due to one of the residents who carries a Spar offers magazine everywhere with him
which contains a picture of a punnet of, yes you guessed it, red tomatoes on the bottom right-hand side (half price at only 210 forints in case you are interested). My latest language acquisitions are the ability to say ‘come here’ and ‘change your shoes’ in an attempt to maintain some level professionalism being able to assist with day-to-day duties when the clients are not themselves working in the sheltered workshops. Finally I can now say all of the characters from the tale of Winne the Pooh in Hungarian, thanks to a game of memory, well you never know when this might crop up in conversation. So yes, you are correct in thinking that I can’t (yet) coherently buy a train ticket to Budapest but I can tell you that Winne the Pooh is yellow.
"In June 2011, I went to a project in the Alpine region
of northern Italy as part of my summer break from uni. For 2 weeks I lived on a
mountain with 10 other volunteers, from countries including Turkey, Japan and
South Korea. I was the only Brit and I loved it! I really got to know about
what life is like in countries I’ve not yet been lucky enough to visit, and I
made some friends for life. It was an exhausting two weeks – we were over 1000m
above sea level, and cars could only get us up as far as 600m. But it was also
really good fun - in the evenings we played games, cooked dinner together, and
watched the stars. At the weekend we visited the local city, had a homemade
Italian lunch, and went to a local festival.
The project involved monitoring the flora and fauna in the
area. We took photos and made sketches of the flowers; caught butterflies in
order to identify them before setting them free; and we set humane traps to see
what mice are living on the mountain. That last one involved some very early mornings,
and seeing the sunrise was wonderful. To be honest, it didn’t feel like work –
we felt lucky to be in such a beautiful part of the world. It wasn’t a very
long project but we knew we were making a difference – all that the Italian
organisation needed was for a group of people to take some time to survey the
mountainside, a task too big for the team of just 3 who work in the park. Our
efforts made it into the local newspaper! It was an experience I’ll never
forget, and I’m so pleased I was a part of it."
