Ciao, I am Anastasia and in the next few lines, I will present you my first experience as an EVS volunteer with the project “No One Is Out”.

I have to admit my arrival in Palermo was not very exciting, since I arrived on a late Monday evening and everything seemed quite isolated, but eventually everything turned out quite well. My mentor helped me to settle down and gave me the keys of my new home for the next ten months, and back then, I realised that a new adventure had just began.

Since the first night, I met some of my current flatmates, some of who would become current roommates too. The flat was quite spacious and in the centre of the city, something convenient so to explore the treasures of this beautiful city at any time of the day.

I can say that Palermo has the magical ability to make you feel like home although you can be far from it.

I am an EVS volunteer and I have the opportunity and luck to work in CESIE’s office, which I have to admit, helps me improve many aspects of my soft and hard skills, as I have the chance to get involved in many different projects and also discover many different aspects of my personality. Since started working in the office, three days after my arrival in Palermo, I had the chance to share the office with two of the most amazing people I could ever meet, Maria Luisa and Alice who made me feel quite comfortable and helped me adapt in the office reality, while at the same time they tried really hard to teach me some Italian.

I still have some months left until my EVS finishes, but as the hours, days, months go by I have to admit that I leave a quite intense cultural and learning experience that will accompany me for life.

As my friend Bea told me once, in Palermo you cry three times, once when you arrive because you do not like the city, the second one when you weight yourself because in Palermo you eat all the time and third is when you leave because you are so in love with the city that it seems impossible to say ‘Goodbye’, and although I have not cried in the first two cases, I am one hundred percent sure I will cry in the third one. 

The time here goes by really fast, but still I have to discover many hidden treasures of Palermo and Sicily in general.

Anastasia Panitsa
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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