Volunteer in France

I started working at an elderly care home after high school, and even though I appreciated my work very much I knew that this was temporary work, while I searched for a way to get to a French-speaking country. Because there was no doubt I was going to go to such a country. I had studied French for six years and I was certainly not going to let this language be forgotten.

                           I started browsing through old brochures, which I had collected throughout the years, and found one about an EU program for volunteers, called the European Solidarity Corps. It said that all the costs would be covered: travel to and from the project, insurance, accommodation, money for food and even some pocket money. The idea was to enable young people at the age of 18-25 to go abroad and do voluntary work, without having to pay anything themselves. To me, it appeared to be too good to be true, but I went to the program’s website and realized that it was actually true.

                           The site itself was easy to use. I created a profile where I presented myself, uploaded a CV in English and then I could start applying for different projects. For each project I had to write a short motivation about why I wanted to volunteer in their project specifically. Normally I didn’t get any answer, but one day I got an email with an invitation to a digital interview from a small project in western France. At the time I had been home from work for several days, due to a covid infection and this email really cheered me up. We decided on a date and time for the interview and really tired, with high fever, I went to this interview, which later led to a 12 months stay in France.

Updated on piektdiena, 01/07/2022