People would often start by saying “Hi, my name is…” and continue writing a boring blog about how they got in contact with Youth For Equality and what was their job here. Nobody is truly interested in who other people are. Not unless they get the impression of them being different to the other 8 billion humans on this planet. I consider myself unique, a special breed, I’m Spanish so… Hi, my name is David and I’ve been an ESC Volunteer for the past 10 months… Okay, just joking. I’m actually special and the information is actually true.
You might be asking yourself, why does this person start a “blog” like this, and honestly… I’m not sure. I guess I’m feeling creative or something. I’ve got to admit that I studied Music Production in Madrid, Spain (where I am from). So I have a creative side of me that shouts me NOT to do conventional stuff. Take risks, and explore the world. So that’s what I did, and ended up volunteering in the European Solidarity Corps, in a random town in the middle of Eastern Europe called Trnava, which is located in Slovakia. At the beginning I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do, never before I worked in any serious job. But that didn’t stop me. I decided to spend 10 months in a foreign country discovering first and most importantly, how to not die of starvation (since I would live on my own also for the first time) and second, what did I really want to do with my life (typical Gen Z philosophy).
Some time after my arrival, and meeting up with the incredible team at Youth For Equality, I ended up taking the spot that my colleges had for some random thing called „On-Arrival Training“. They both were sick at the same time so it was my turn to use that spot and go to Bratislava for this Training thing. I didn’t know it was gonna be so fun and interactive. This training was SO useful for me, because it provided some guidance about what I actually signed for, and how to properly do my “job”. I also met a lot of nice people from different cultures and nationalities that were volunteering around the same time I was. Some I never saw again, since they finished their projects earlier, and I met others when the stars aligned. All volunteers had different schedules and were spread across Slovakia so it was complicated to come up with a plan that we all could agreed on.
Over time I would start to get used to the tasks I had to do in our office. I decided to (since I had some level of experience in Graphic Design and Marketing) assume the role of Social Media Manager/guy/coordinator/person/what-else-can-I-call-it/you-name-it. I decided that we need to rework our feed. SO I created some new design for the templates of our Instagram and other platforms. And from there I made every single post, story, link… But that isn’t everything I did in all these 10 months here. I prepared many workshops for our projects in this town/village/city/you-get-the-point. I also helped at the local Klubovña (ñ=gn in some languages, like english), which is a place where kids could just go and be “chill guy’s”. We hosted some Training Courses and Youth Exchanges so I got to meet even MORE people from MORE countries (I feel that I have a friend in almost every European country). Anyways, the topic of these were Health and Mobility (at least the ones I participated in), we would spend around 3 weeks doing workshops and making some trips related to the topic and even get to learn some Slovak.
There have been many things like this happening during these 10 months: Made different presentations with different types of crowds (the library and multiple schools), attended different events and even made my own Spanish Speaking Club and got to show some Spanish as well. CRAZY. I would have to write a whole saga just to tell EVERY SINGLE THING, but honestly, this experience made me realise who I wanna be, what I want to do and where I want to go. Gave me a different way of thinking and learnt different skills that, I’m certain, will help me in the future. I wasn’t really looking for an opportunity like this one cause I didn’t really knew it existed so in fact I’d say that this was „The Opportunity that found me!“



