My name is Carmen, I am a Spanish girl and I have had my first EVS experience with the project “no one is out” at CESIE, in the marvellous but also chaotic city of Palermo. CESIE offers a lot of beautiful projects across different fields of action. Thanks to them I have felt comfortable ever since I arrived here. On my first day they showed me around the city and gave me some tips to make my stay easier.

Palermo, as I said before, is a very chaotic city but it is what makes it marvellous; it’s a very lively city! I was surprised when I noticed that even though Palermo has a strong sense of identity (mostly food related), it enables you to get to know about other cultures: you can find a lot of restaurants or places where you can have drinks or listen to music from other countries.

The EVS that I chose is only two-month long, but in this short period of time I have had the chance to learn and live a multicultural life. During my work, I was helping in a daily activity at Centro Astalli, whose aim is to integrate migrants and refugees and make their inclusion easier. In other words, they are fighting for human rights. This centre offers different services like breakfast, shower, laundry, Italian language lessons and medical and legal assistance for the migrant people. Everybody that works at Centro Astalli is a volunteer and each of us is from a different country, which makes this place more beautiful and mixed.

This volunteering experience gave me the possibility to feel like I was in different places of the world at the same time. I was lucky because I met people who told me about their country, their religion, traditions, language and food. I have also learned about the current Italian government and the European Commission: politics, legislation and everything that has to do with human problems.

This experience has been better than what I expected, that’s why I decided to stay for a few more months and do my second EVS with CESIE and with the other volunteers that I was lucky to live with and that I can now call my friends.

Carmen María

EVS volunteer within the Erasmus+ project “No one is out”

What is EVS?

EVS (European Voluntary Service) is an international volunteer program funded by the European Commission. It enables all young people legally resident in Europe, aged between 18 and 30 years, to carry out an international volunteer service in an organization or in a public body in Europe, Africa, Asia or South America for a period ranging from 2 to 12 months.

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