End of August 2020. Summer is almost over and September is coming, which means that it could be the right moment to take a new start. I am on holiday for 1 week, and I decide to go to the countryside to spend time with my family. It’s so good to disconnect from Parisian life for a few days. I enjoy the walks in the woods and the bicycle tours. Simple things are the best. I feel free, inspired, serene and I realise that I didn't have this feeling for a long time. Last time I had this feeling I was abroad, in Armenia.
A declic is happening inside me, why shouldn't I move abroad again? It’s been almost a year since I was back in France, I was no more fulfilled in my work, and I knew that getting a new job wouldn't help me to be more fulfilled. I wanted something more. I wanted to experiment living abroad one more time.
After my walk, I went back home and I turned on my computer.
In my mind, I knew that it would be the beginning of a new adventure. Indeed it was.
3 months later here I am, in Roma, volunteering with AICEM.
What led me to come here?
To better understand why I decided to apply for this mission, let’s go back 1 year earlier.
At this time, i was volunteering in Armenia thanks to the civil service, which is a mobility program that enables people from 18 to 25 to volunteer in France or abroad. This experience was really rewarding to me in a personal and professional way.
It has changed my outlook on life on many levels and it also gave me the virus of travelling and living abroad. A year later, I was still not ready to get a job abroad, but I wanted to be involved in projects that make sense to me. I knew that there were several possibilities to volunteer in the social field, such as the European Solidarity Corps.
I applied to several projects on the ESC platform, including AICEM.
A few days later, I had an interview with Linda and Alessia. They provided to me a detailed presentation of the association, the projects they lead and the values they spread.
I was enthusiastic because it was completely in line with what I wanted to do: being involved in an organization with the goal of empowering people and contributing to a better society. At the time of writing this article, It’s been 3 weeks since I started volunteering.
For now, I am mainly in charge of the communication of the esc projects through social networks such as this blog and an Instagram account. In the next months, I hope that I will have the opportunity to work on project designing and international mobility.
