PRESENTATION

 

With the arrival of summer, I did not know how I was going to spend my holidays, but I was 100% sure I did not want to make the typical trip. I wanted something more, something different.

At an age when you can not stand, I wanted to travel, but to live an experience that would give me something more than an ordinary trip.

Once I got to know the volunteer project, I bought a flight to Cape Town without thinking too much.

About the volunteer project, well, everything has to be said

 

Ignacio and Carlos, who are the creators of the project, started alone from scratch a year ago when they went on a trip to South Africa. I would say that this was what most caught my attention; see two young people of our age so motivated and involved with such a sensitive issue and with a brutal desire to continue working with the project.

Volunteering took place in the Hout Bay community 20 minutes from Cape Town. Due to the social exclusion suffered by this community, the vast majority of people are unemployed. Without work or a source of income and a lot of free time, many of them start to use drugs and even to traffic with them. This has a negative effect on young people, since they lose their reference figures as father and mother and grow up with bad examples.

In the morning volunteering is done at the school “Sentinel Primary School” teaching the kids through reading, writing, math and geography activities and in the afternoons outdoors with something similar from a scout field called ” Houties “(from the name of Hout Bay) with games and activities in which children are divided by age groups.

The goal of Houties, which is undoubtedly the strong point of volunteering, is to get children out of the streets by involving them and motivating them not only in sports activities, but also in activities of values, learning and respect.

On weekends we made excursions and enjoyed the landscapes, hiking and the incredible nature that characterizes this country.

Now, why volunteer?

In my case there were many reasons, but I will try to be brief. Volunteering is an opportunity to face new situations and put yourself to the test, to know yourself, to learn and know where you are from, the people around you.

You will notice many things that you would not have learned if you had gone on a normal vacation.

There will be hard times and, sometimes, unforeseen situations but you will also learn from this to manage them. You will meet new people and, perhaps, different from you but, at the end of the day, they have gone to the same thing as you. You will love it.