TESTIMONIAL

I am satisfied with my volunteer experience in Argentina. On my first day, after Spanish classes, I went together with the volunteer coordinator to the project for an introduction meeting. I got some easy tasks to do and received information about the project itself. The next days, everything went better and easier day by day and I got more responsibilities. My working days were from Monday till Thursday, 2 hours per day. Every time I arrived, they welcomed me warmly in the Argentinian way. The volunteer work in Buenos Aires was also good for my Spanish. My Spanish knowledge increased a lot because I had to speak Spanish all the time.

My volunteer program in Colombia so far has been really nice. Today I organized for the second time a little football tournament in an orphanage for children and I'll teach English tomorrow in another orphanage.

The volunteer work in Medellin is divided into many different places, with different children, different rules and different procedures. This sometimes makes it, next to my broken Spanish, a bit difficult to contribute one hundred percent. However, I have all the freedom to initiate my own classes and I get all the support I need. By the time I will get to know everything better and little by little I will accordingly also be able to work more on the different projects.

I already met many people and have friendly colleagues and friendly housemates. For next weekend, we already planned some trips in Colombia together, and I am even considering elongating my stay here.

“I volunteered at this clinic for patients with psychological problems during my volunteer program in Cusco. I was extremely impressed by the staff in the clinic and the methods they used for psychological care.

I mainly volunteered with patients with organic mental disorders, learning disabilities and schizophrenia. I assisted in the classroom, encouraging the patients to listen to the psychologist in charge, and explaining instructions in a more simple way. I also was enthusiastic to them about the work they were doing or the pictures they were drawing. I also assisted with general tasks such as giving out snacks at food time or drinks when they needed.

I visited the nurse in the clinic a few times to look through the patients’ folders and speak about things such as what medications they were on, and what difficulties they have faced in their lives in the past; and this I found really interesting.

For a few days during my volunteer project I also worked in the addiction block, where I came across people with drug and alcohol addiction, gambling addiction and also eating disorders. I listened in on some meetings that a clinical psychologist had with the group of patients, and learnt a bit about the group therapies that take place.

Overall, volunteering in Peru was a very different experience to what I have come across before and parts were also very challenging. But I definitely learnt from the experience and now have some things that I can take away with me for my future career”.