The Infinity of Volunteering

My project was special in that every day was different and there was no place where I had to go every day/x days a week. Of course, we had an office that I could use if I wanted it - but that's up to me. I was making videos for 4 months in Latvia together with a Spanish volunteer. With our videos, we promoted the European Solidarity Corps, solidarity, and introduced Latvian projects to future volunteers throughout the country. That's why every day was different. We usually shoot 3 videos a month, for which I usually contacted the volunteers and coordinators at each organization to organize which days we can film, in which city, and if necessary, ask for permission to show minors in the video. We tried to present as many types of social causes as possible, for which you can work in these projects.

We started to film in October (2022) for our project. First we went to Rēzekne where we filmed with an organisation where the volunteers works with seniors and handicapped people. Then in Jēkabpils we have a volunteer friend who works at a Youth Center. We sometimes join her programs so it was a good experience to do video with her.

In November we spent a week in Gulbene, because we shooted video with two organisations. In one the volunteers mainly work at a preschool, but they also held some language calsses for adults. The interesting thing about their project that the volunteers have the possibility to learn Latvian folklore dance on a weekly basis. The other organisation's volunteer works in an elementary school. He teaches the kids about Indian and German culture and also gives piano classes.

Later this month we went to Ventspils. The volunteers here have several activities in different places. They go to different classes (not only in Ventspils but in district schools too) and teach youngsters of different age groups about French and Greek tourism, sometimes teach about environmental protection in interactive games or just do team building activities for classes.

In December we were shooting in Rīga. We shoot 4 videos here. One is about an organisation who supports LGBTQ+ community. The second one is a youth center. The interesting thing about this youth center that one of the volunteers there, Marie, was part of a short term esc project at Vidusdaugavas NVO before, the same project “The Infinity of Volunteering”. We shoot video with another organisation too who work with youngsters, but there the volunteers also promote ESC and Erasmus+.

Our last filmed video was about an organisation who supports refugees. As you can see these three months we shooted 9 videos.

January (2023) was about finishing up the editing and add Latvian subtitles to each video. Also in every place we asked the volunteers, coordinators and sometimes even the youngsters to tell us in one word what is solidarity for them. From these short videos we edited together our 10th video of the project.