Volunteering with Migrants in Norway

Rodrigo is Portuguese, and at the age of 18, he travelled through Europe using a community programme called DiscoverEU, which covered his travel costs. In a few weeks, he visited Norway, England, France, Monaco, and Malta. Although the European Commission's idea is to provide train travel, flights are also available, especially to peripheral or ultraperipheral countries like Malta. “I started by flying to Malta and from Malta to Oslo, where I was involved in volunteer activities,” says Rodrigo, who attended the Mela Festivalen, a music festival focused on the culture brought by migrants living in the norwegian capital. “This allowed me to meet people from many countries, particularly migrants from Asia,” he says. This volunteer work experience turned out to be an opportunity for Non Formal Education for Rodrigo, who claims to have learned a lot. “First of all, I learned about Europe and European citizens and how we have so much in common, despite the various contrasts,” says the young man from Lisbon, for whom “the Scandinavian environment can be diverse, but the truth is that I realised that the European Union is a kind of de facto union, which made me feel at home.”

Updated on It-Tlieta, 17/02/2026