We asked me: why are you personnally affected by this? Why did you choose to write about these topics? I never thought about it, because for me the answer was rather obvious. I don’t like injustice and if my voice can serve a cause, if I can fight what is wrong, then of course I will. But why now? This is the real question, why now I feel the importance of the fight. I mean, I think now, more than ever it’s a hot topic in the world with everything going on. I think now people are starting to realize what is wrong with this world. I think now people are starting to realize their strength. I think now people are starting to realize how important it is to show solidarity and to change theirselves and the world.
However, I think the main reason that I get more involved in these topics is that now I’m here, in Portugal and my life my life has changed a lot. I think that before I came here, I sort of avoided the problem, I didn’t want to hurt anyone by choosing the wrong words, I was not enough confident to say my opinion.
Here, in Portugal I first learned to be more open-minded by meeting people from all over the world: Turkey, Jordan, Poland, Portugal… Also, I have met a lot of new people here who are very involved in causes, they stand up for their opinion, their dighnity, they stand up for justice and they are fighting for it. I take the example of them, of their strength. I kind of took inspiration from them.
The biggest part of my personality that I have improved here is without hesitation my confidence and I know I have spoken about it before. I took it from the people I met, I took it from their experiences but mostly from my experiences and from my own path. Thanks to this, now I am ready to stand up for myself, to stand up for my opinion and to fight for causes that affect me. This is why I really recommend traveling, you will learn a lot about others, from others and about yourself. I think travelling is something really important if you want to know yourself better and also to be more indepedant.
Indeed, since I have been abroad, I have discovered what it is to be alone, to manage your affairs alone, to solve your problems, to manage your money and to rely on yourself. So of course, now I feel more free to say what I feel, I care less about people’s judgment.
Finally, it’s already something to travel, but it’s another thing to travel in the context of volunteering. As I said, you meet new people from all over the world, you learn new skills but you also share a lot. I have totally rediscovered the notion of sharing since the start of my project. I’ve probably talked about it before but what we share the most is our experience. For me, this is something really useful and I didn’t even notice it was. So by sharing their experience, people made me realize things about them, about me and about the world. I for example noticed how lucky I can be in some cases, or how injustice is present all over the world. So all of these things motivated me to give more, to give my voice for causes and to give hope to live in a better world.
