Your curiosity, your initiative and your attitude towards the surrounding social context can make the difference and transform your volunteering experience in a bag full of unexpected competences, friends and skills, a huge bag ready for your next trip and for your life in general!
You are the only person able to produce amazing personal results during your EVS project, but it’s quite normal that very often these results are not fully achieved through the main project, but thanks to all the activities you take part in, beyond your working hours.
Cyprus is giving me the opportunity to discover many hobbies, passions, activities and cultural interests. During these months of volunteering I spent my free time meeting people from many different countries, sharing and exchanging with them experiences, friendship and positive moments. This was also possible thanks to the workshops, visits, seminars and group discussions organized in both sides of the island and in the “Buffer Zone “of Nicosia (the area military controlled which divides the 2 sides of the island). In this area, since many years, the young people of the 2 communities (but not only) are trying to build some peace and communication paths through activities open to everyone.
Most of these activities opened my eyes and stimulated my thoughts about important issues within a completely different framework: different from my country, my daily life, my usual view of the society.
The fact that the island is still in a peace-building process after the 1974 war, is giving me the opportunity to have an active role in this local, but very important, initiatives and to feel part of a young people’s community strongly convinced that the dialogue can always improve the society.
Communication and media in volunteering, conflict resolution, women’s rights, history teaching, movies, music and arts for peace, are just some of the topics I faced in the days I spent in the Buffer Zone.
Of course the Buffer Zone is not the only place in which the communities are building peace and dialogue. I took part in many interesting events organised in both sides of the island, by locals and foreigners together: workshops and training about theater, dance therapy, storytelling, cinema, music, entrepreneurship, human rights.
Cyprus is alive and for those who really want to feel the history, the soul and the energy of this island, for those who decide to really live the contradictions and the potentials of this beautiful place, it will offer special moments full of thoughts, friends and deep reflections.