This is the
first cohort in which I am part of this experience as a volunteer, like most of
everyone here. The main thing I want to talk about on this blog is the way I
found out about this job, which today is so important to me.
First I met
Raquel on 2013 on a conference she and another volunteer from UpClose where
giving to the students studying biology in UMSA, where they showed some results
from the job they were doing, in this conference they mentioned some of the
other projects they had going on, one of those was free English classes in a
school in Mallasa. This class was especially prepared for the kids of the
school but also for interested people (like me), and because my English was so
terrible back then I decided to go and there I met my first English teachers
Ana Cossio from Bolivia and as UK volunteers Laura, Kay and Jonathan, they
taught us with so much patience and affection that they really made an impact
on me. After them the teachers were Adriana as a Bolivian volunteer and as UK volunteers
Greg, Anna and Huw, from whom I´ve learned so much and I remember very fondly.
This was such an eye opening experience that I found myself motivated to do some
of the volunteering work they did, this is how during three months on the
weekends of 2014 I became a volunteer working on the Porvenir Foundation, that
works with kids with disabilities
through hippotheraphy.
At the end of
last year, I was so interested on taking English classes again with the
volunteers, I contacted my teacher Adriana who instead - giving me a big
surprise- offered me to work as a volunteer with her, this surprise got me
thinking of course because I knew this meant giving a lot of my time that at
that moment I didn´t really have but this news came like a shock to me,
thinking how my English teacher is offering this to me without any type of
personal gain, arouse in me a real desire to help my country in any possible
way, and even if this doesn´t mean we are eliminating inequality, I know
there´s more people who, by the job that is being done, get motivated to help
others too. This way, more and more people become part of the chain that needs
to grow so that this world becomes a better place every day.
It is very
important for me to show that the fruits of your job as volunteers-and now mine
too- does actually have the impact that we are all hoping to make (either big
or small). I feel thankful; there are people like you on the other side of the
world that feel interested on what happens on this side.
Now, in the
team I work with I’m really happy and content, because in the Childhood and
Youth Empowerment project, in some way we work to try to get the children to
improve their lifestyles and I really enjoy this, especially when I see the
kids enjoying the activities we do with them, just like I enjoyed the classes I
had and the way they prepared it for us.
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