I came to do my EVS to Portugal at the end of September, and so far my experience here has been one of the best things in my life. There are a lot of reasons for that. First of all, the project I’ve been working on, Agueda Volunteering Land, has succeeded to go further than my expectations. The work I’m part of is very inspiring and fulfilling.

The work with the children is amazing, they are very fun, and they always share a lot of positivity with us. We are working on that to teach them something while having fun and that’s a noble kind of work for me. What I personally really like is that except the work on the project with planning and developing activities with the children we also do more fun stuff in the organization. Being part of almost everything that our organization decides to do makes me feel like I’m definitely part of the organization. Also to have a sense of belonging somewhere while I’m on EVS in a different country is something that matters. The work is also like exploring and experiencing different things because we always include new things in the work. I remember one day when we were going into the high-school Marques Castilho to tell the students about EVS, with all the opportunities the non-formal education has. For example, one student asked does he need to have a lot of money to go on EVS. We were there to clear their dilemmas, to educate them on all of the opportunities they have and to encourage them. Also to tell them that they don’t need to have a lot of money to travel around the world, to meet new people and grow. For me those days when we were working with the students were one of the best, because we were getting to initiate a positive change in someone’s life.

I also remember the day we went to a nursery home to make one day better for the old people there. To clean dogs, as part of my personal project that I had freedom to write it and develop it. We are doing activities, and we are challenged, but we learn a lot from our work. I’ve thought many times that till today, except the work we do, my EVS is complete because of the people around me. Me and the other volunteers and also all of us as a group, we go along very well. It’s a small and safe circle of close friends who share everything, happiness and sadness, chocolates and hugs. We all learn a lot from each other, about our different cultures and ourselves.

My life between work and relaxation it’s balanced, the team in the organization is open for ideas and changes that will improve our way of living. I also like so much Mondays, because they are scheduled to try new things and to have health and leisure activities. The mentoring we have it’s also very helpful and I learned a lot of things and seeked the solutions to many problems on mentoring.

One of the things I like the most is the constant meeting of new people; everything we do, everywhere we go we meet new people and that brings a lot of joy in to my life. Especially when we went to do presentation in the university and since then we hang out sometimes with the people from there and it’s really fun. I also have good relations with my flat mates, maybe our apartment it’s not always perfectly clean, but we are always there for each other.

Filip Cvetanov