Panna in Spain

These past 6 months have passed in the blink of an eye, and now that I’ve been back home for a while, I can properly reflect and think back on my time in the lovely city of Jerez de la Frontera, in the south of Spain.

During my volunteering there I got the opportunity to engage in various tasks like content creation, writing articles, working with other solidarity organizations, and designing some easy posters or project outlooks.

Even the ones I never thought I would grow to enjoy I’ve grown close to in the end, like presenting in front of a high school class, which challenged my ever-present anxieties. Thankfully over time I got better, and now I don’t mind talking in front of a lot of people as much as before. Many times, during these past few months where I was asked to describe my volunteering, I realized my approach was always very “people-based” meaning that I depend and focus much more on the people around me, rather than the tasks I have to do daily. To avoid any confusions, no, this doesn’t mean that I was so caught up in the people around me I didn’t pay attention to my job, it simply means that no matter what the job was, my experience was highly influenced (in a good way thankfully) by the lovely people I was surrounded with.

As most people, I can also only just compare my own experiences with each other, so as someone coming from Hungary, Spain has shown me an entirely new way to view life, and I learnt so many new things here in this limited time: “Take it easy, it’s never that serious, there’s always a solution, you can do it” and similar things circled around in my head as I was mentally and physically preparing myself to leave this wonderful place behind. The kindness that people showed me here will definitely stay with me forever, and I hope there will always remain a little piece of it with me.

I’m extremely thankful that I had the opportunity to participate in this project through the European Solidarity Corps and with the help of the Youth Bridges organization, and to have had such an amazing team surrounding me, I will keep you in my heart forever.

Hosting organisation:

AJ INTER aims at developing educational projects within the European framework, especially involving young people. 

The organisation provides information about offered activities and projects, invite young people to participate and help them to create their own projects. They also give knowledge about opportunities in Europe like employment and grants. As well as promote values European awareness, solidarity, cooperation and environmental awareness.