Hello, jestem (my name is) Jorge, I’m from Portugal and I came here to share a bit of
my experience as a long term volunteer here in Szczecin.

Around one year ago I had enrolled in this project not knowing what I should expect, all the new places I could go and all the new things I could do. This was very exciting for me. Obviously there were less good moments but I could never have expected everything that I had the opportunity to live here.

There were many days that I randomly remembered that I’m not in my “past life” in my country. “I’m in the middle of a city I don’t know, in an unknown country, I can’t speak their language and I’m even living with strangers that I’ve never seen in my life. It can be a scary thought and it was, at the same time it was also very exciting. I love that feeling of discovering something for the first time and Poland, especially Szczecin, awoke this part of me that I had forgotten I had. Everything was new for me and the things I already knew I started to view with different eyes and a new point of view.

I was part of the group of volunteers that were assigned to work in the different kindergartens around the city, and so I was placed in pre-school named “Żagielek”.

I was there from Monday to Friday between 9am till 3pm

Even without speaking their language somehow we made it work. It was difficult at the beginning because the language barrier was a real issue but as time went by I started to pick up some words here and there thanks to ladies that worked in the kitchen, the teachers and the kids.

I really enjoyed spending time with the kids. After a while I started to notice that I was feeling proud whenever they did something they had difficulties in doing for a long time.
Their sadness was also something I could feel and how limiting the amount of help that I could actually provide due to the communication difficulty. Happiness whenever I heard them call me “wujek” (uncle). Every moment they asked me to do one more air-plane or draw this and that I will cherish forever, this feeling of I could be useful to them and not wanting to let them down was my fuel on occasions that I felt too tired or in a bad mood.

For this and more I’m truly grateful to them.

In the meantime, while all of this was happening I was also experiencing what it is like to live in this country for the first time, furthermore the culture differences.

To be honest I don’t know what I was expecting for eastern Europeans as a culture, perhaps i anticipated racist situations however to my surprise there isn’t any moment that I actually felt scared or unsafe. People here usually keep to themselves and if you don’t bother them they won’t bother you. Most of my interactions were mostly because I was different than what their used to and would like to know more about me, “where im from?”,”what are you doing here?” and “why Szczecin?” were some of the questions that I used to hear a lot, I ended up meeting a lot of people and had a lot of fun.

I did manage to see many new places, I discovered many places in Szczecin and also went beyond this city. Police, Warsaw, Krakow, Lipiany, Torun, the Netherlands, Berlin and Auschwitz-Birkenau are some of the places I had the chance to travel to as well.

The most difficult adversity I faced was being bored, because that feeling was followed up with loneliness, missing my friends, my mother, my country and being able to talk with anyone. I was able to learn how to deal with this by fully embracing it and be okay with it. I learned how to appreciate every moment possible. be more in the present, moving on from my past regrets and worrying less about the future.

This experience as a volunteer has been very rich full, full with ups and downs but fortunately the good moments outweigh the not so good ones.

I highly recommend everyone to experience something like this. I was able to learn more about myself by getting out of my comfort zone with each challenge thrown at me. I was also able to remember many characteristics that I had in me but simply forgot, the possibility to further develop my qualities, work on my downsides, these being related to my way of thinking or attitudes. Due to my participation in this project additionally I discovered more that i like and distinguish what I don’t like. With all this knowledge I feel more prepared to face any adversity and create a path in my life to accomplish the things I seek.

I want to end this with yes it’s difficult to become a volunteer but the “rewards” at the end are worth it. It all depends on the mindset you decide to adopt

Dziękuję bardzo POLITES for the opportunity.
Thank you for reading this.