EVS: IT'S UP TO YOU!
EVS - "Killed time or filled time"? The answer to that question is up to you.
“It’s up to you”. This is a phrase that defines European voluntary service. But some volunteers don’t like when they hear that EVS it’s up to them. Despite of being integrated on several social contexts and backgrounds, a volunteer is always like a comet that falls from the sky, often feeling alone, trapped in a new culture and in a new language. Many volunteers decide to do voluntary service with the wrong idea that everything is already planned for them, when it’s up to them to build their own plans and reality, since the beginning.
Every volunteer has problems and obstacles to overcome during EVS, but we can look at them as moving challenges of space and time, as a part of a learning experience of personal growth. EVS depends not only on the project, as it depends especially on the volunteer. In EVS, nothing is really what we expected, because everything changes so fast. And that’s the true ability to transform that characterizes it.
Before EVS, when I thought about it, I was most worried about language and working kind of problems. But when I arrived, I encountered much bigger challenges: learning to leave my comfort zone was one of them. But what did I learn more? Many things. The first is that my ideas don’t always need to be as I imagined them, because there are no limits if we can adapt our reality to our resources. The second thing that I learned is that voluntary service is not just a job. It’s not about “what do you want to be when you grow up” but “who” do you want to be.
Working with kids was not my dream job for an EVS. I imagined myself in a youth organization office, on a computer desk; but I came to work with children and I found in them great teachers and a reason to smile. They taught me more about the foreign language than many books; they taught me to see the simplicity of life through their eyes. That made me think of how working with kids gives us an amazing feeling of freedom. And that is inspiring, to feel so free of judgment and not being afraid of it.
Origami was also something I learned, in my project. I think origami made me understand the meaning of EVS. Voluntary service is not simple, that is why it is an interesting experience, because it’s all about giving shape to it. A blank piece of paper is just a blank piece of paper. But when you add something more to it, it can be anything, from a drawing to an origami. From a sketch to a masterpiece.
Even with its obstacles, EVS turns out to be a so greater and spiritual experience. It showed me how to rely on competences and abilities I didn’t know I had. And that takes courage, because EVS is not easy! I arrived to my project with closed definitions about ideas and now these concepts are widened, open, alive and moving. And that’s OK, because one thing that voluntary service teaches is that we have a right to change something.
I heard from another volunteer that EVS is like a nativity process, after which you are born again. I couldn’t agree more, since voluntary service is a process of learning how to create our own opportunities and to seize them; it’s a process of knowing how to create problems, solutions and perspectives, while coming across a new frame of knowledge. That’s why EVS is like a stone waiting to be sculpted. It’s an energy that you can design, according to your creativity. And like us, it is a living process that never stops changing.
What do I want in my life? I want to do as many things as possible. I want to be happy. Now, it’s up to me.