Date : 13/11/2024
Introduction
Hello, my name is Simon Martineau. I’m 22 years old and a volunteer from the European Solidarity Corps from Angers, France. I arrived in Lisbon on the 11th of November 2024 for a 6 month mission with Rato – ADCC.
I am currently pursuing a master’s degree in robotics engineering, but before I receive my degree, I decided to take a gap year to pursue something different. International volunteering seems to me to be a great way to contribute to a good cause, learn a new language and culture, and set myself apart from other graduate students.
Why did I choose to do this project with Rato – ADCC?
Many international volunteering missions ask participants to pay a large sum of money, as well as visas, transportation, etc to do a mission while saying no skills are required. This felt off to me and online, I found experts warning such missions can have a negative impact on the very people you might be trying to help. Here is a great guide from National Geographic.
Here is the most important advice I found, “A key rule of thumb is: if you’re not qualified to do something in the UK, don’t pretend you can do it somewhere else simply because they’re poor.” says Xavier Font, professor of sustainability marketing at the University of Surrey. And think about whether your actions would really be helping the local area in the long term. If volunteering to teach in another country leads to a local teacher getting fired in the process because you’re offering cheaper labor (which has happened), we can’t say your mission had a positive impact.
Done diligently, volunteering can have a great impact on both yourself and those you aim to help. Turns out you don’t even need to travel far to find problems to solve, there are plenty even in developed countries. The European Solidarity Corps is Europe’s version of the US Peace Corps. The objective is to help adults aged 18 to 30 join a verified solidarity project in the European Union, while assisting with costs associated with travel, housing and food.
With all this in mind, I decided to go ahead with my volunteering goal with the ESC. I made an account and spent several months in the summer looking through the projects that were posted. New projects appeared regularly, and I occasionally found some that interested me. The associations I contacted didn’t always give me a response, but I kept going. I signed up to Rato – ADCC’s project which was right up my alley. Helping locals around Lisbon and Setúbal in Portugal increase their technology literacy is important. And these are tools I use daily so I feel qualified to contribute to the association’s educational projects. We had a meeting through Google Meet and a week later they sent me an email saying I had been picked.
My current state of mind
I am going to be 100% honest, this project is both very exciting and a bit terrifying. Not because I am in a new country, with a new language, new customs and far from my friends and family. I spent 4 months in Tallinn, Estonia this summer for an Erasmus internship and I loved it.
This is slightly scary because I chose to deviate from the traditional path most students follow at my university. All my friends went straight to their final year of study, and in a year they will be working. I’m the only one who decided to dedicate a year of his time to try to do volunteer work, and it feels like swimming against the current, so to speak.
I took a leap of faith into the unknown. Will I be happy in 6 months with what I’ll have done? Will I accomplish what I set out to do here? Will it be worth it? Should I have done anything else instead?
I know these are all normal questions to ask oneself before any endeavor, and perhaps this is a mistake. Or perhaps it’ll be an incredible experience that I’ll be proud of myself for having done. The only way to find out is to trust yourself, give this project a fair shot and give it my all.
This was my first in a series of weekly posts. If you’re interested in this association and what we do or have other questions, don’t hesitate to contact us or write a comment below. I’ll be posting every Saturday what I’ll have done during the week so stay tuned for more.
