Imagine to be in a completely different world, in a place that you have only seen in pictures, helping children from Africa, or cleaning the environment from Spain. No doubt volunteering worldwide means adventure, novelty, challenge, adaptation and real life experience. Being part of the community that you choose, being useful to it while enjoying the new places and the new people, this is what volunteering worldwide is about.

Gaining skills

Starting with learning to adapt, the volunteers will receive trainings and counseling, to help them fulfill better their tasks. By working, they will definitely practice and improve their knowledge and competences. They will also have the chance to address new areas of activity and to use their creativity for initiating their own projects. Working in a new place, with new people requires some documentation and learning efforts that will contribute to the volunteer’s personal and professional growth. An EVS project is by definition a learning service.

Intercultural experience

Above all, an EVS project is an intercultural experience in it’s most concrete meaning. Not only that the volunteer has the chance to know the day by day living in a community that may be very different from it’s own, the chance to learn a new language, to add something new to his/her living style but he/she will also contribute to this intercultural exchange by bringing a fresh, objective point of view, by offering examples from his/her cultural background and by sharing it with the others. Living with other volunteers, from different countries is a real intercultural learning experience.

Offer help where needed

There are many places and people that need extra help and persons who wish to volunteer may have thought already about some of them. Volunteers can help without being experts and without having a rich life experience but only by offering their time and personal skills. Volunteers can make a difference in places or for people that seem to have no chance to improve their lives. Being committed to serving, volunteers can also receive back joy, gratitude, and the satisfaction of being useful.