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Rethink, Reshape and Awake the Community My European Solidarity Corps volunteering project in Amarante, Portugal
My name is Zuza and I come from Warsaw, Poland. I’m 24 years old. I love to travel and to be surrounded by people from different cultures. What interests me the most is social work, music, international politics, human rights and animal liberation. I chose to join a European Solidarity Corps program to get involved with meaningful work that could help me gain new skills and useful knowledge.
My ESC project took place in the north of Portugal, in a small town of Amarante. It’s a picturesque place with lots of culture and history. The river that runs through the town is called Tâmega. When the weather is sunny you can go to the small beach on the outskirts of the town for a swim. There are many festivities happening here during the summer like Festas de Junho or Festas Amarantina. I came to Amarante at the end of June and I’ve spend here 7 months in total.
I volunteered with an organization called Aventura Marao Clube. AMC, for short, is a private organisation that manages a public space - Casa de Juventude Amarante (CJ), which serves as Youth Hostel and a Community Center. CJ has been managed by AMC since 2009. From that time they have hosted many international volunteers.
The main values of AMC are sustainability, equity and dialogue. In CJ there is a vegetarian restaurant (the only one in town) and a fair trade shop in order to promote those values to Amarante’s community. Every Saturday as part of our volunteering activities we set up Bio Fair market - a small stand in front of Casa de Juventude where we sell organic products coming from local producers.
Each Monday we meet all together - the volunteers and coordinators to plan our schedule, discuss future projects and evaluate past week. What I really loved about this project is that each week is different. Our weekly activities are very diverse from farms to yoga with kids. Apart form that, we often help with occasional tasks like painting a mural at one of Amarante’s schools or seasonal festivities like Halloween party at a local elderly house. What’s more, there is also a lot of room for our own ideas and initiatives. Our coordinators encourage us all the time to carry out our personal projects.
My favorite weekly activity was working with the local farmers. We cooperate with four organic producers. It was always interesting for me to meet and talk with them, they are all happy to share their knowledge and insights on sustainable food production. Each of the four farms focuses on different area - essential oils production, biodynamic wine making, asparagus and blackberry cultivation and raising animals.
Apart from the farms we also help out at various local institutions. We go to schools and kindergartens were we organize free time activities, conduct yoga sessions for kids and simple science experiments. We also visit regularly the elderly house where we do beauty sessions for the senior ladies. What’s more we also cooperate with the center for people with disabilities - we take the clients for kayaks or physical exercise sessions.
Casa de Juventude also hosts a lot of short term projects like Youth Exchanges and Work camps. Us volunteers join them as a Support Team - we help with the logistical organization, we organize integration activities for the participants and we also take part in the project itself. I was supporting two Youth Exchanges - Huge Minority and Urban Garden. In the first one we organized a series of street performances during a local youth festival and in the second one we helped with creating an Urban Garden space for the community of Amarante. Both of those experiences thought me a lot about team building and leadership.
One the ways we could be a part of Amarante’s community is participating in the local festivities. One of my favorite memories is Festa Amarantina - an event taking place in June during which a street of abandoned houses becomes a space for artists and musicians to perform and show their art. CJ volunteers organized a LGBT safe space with music and informational resources about the queer community.
One of my own initiatives was to organize an Oxford Debate workshop for the participants of one of the short term projects happening in CJ. I reached out to my friend from the NGO ‘Nowy Glos’ which organizes debates for young people in order to promote open dialogue. With the help of theoretical resources from my friend I organized the debate and I believe the participants enjoyed it a lot :)
Apart from my volunteer activities I spend a lot of my free time travelling and exploring Portugal. I went for my first ever surfing lesson in the ocean, I hiked the beautiful mountains of Madeira and walked the streets of Lisbon.
I can say that volunteering is an opportunity for you to grow as a person. I know I learned a lot during this time. I also realized a lot of things about myself - my strong sides and my weaknesses. I discovered my love for nature and I am happy I could spend the last 7 months surrounded by it. Moreover, I met a lot of great people along the way that inspired me in many ways. I’m very grateful for this time and I recommend everybody who is ready for such adventure to give it a try :)
