“As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands — one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.” These lines of Audrey Hepburn mean a lot to me. Have you ever noticed how much we receive while helping others? Volunteering comes from the heart, we do it because our heart wants that. Hey! My name is Sona, I’m 26 years old and I’m from the heart of Armenia, from Yerevan. I’m a Chinese language teacher. Few months ago I couldn’t even imagine that my life can completely change in an week ․ Yes, I’m one of the lucky people who was given the opportunity to do ESC in Viseu, Portugal, one of the world’s greatest historical countries, with characteristic and surprising sights, cultural possessions. I’m very happy that I was given the opportunity to do volunteering outside of the borders of Armenia, to share the project with the volunteers from different countries such as Romania, Turkey, Italy and Ukraine.As I’ve already mentioned before, we get a lot by volunteering, so I want to talk about what I got from this international project. The first advantage is travelling and discovering new countries and new cultures, this experience shapes us into a more open-minded individuals. The next advantage is practicing languages in different situations by listening, speaking, writing and reading and over time you understand that you are able to express ideas and needs better and more confidently. The most helpful thing for that was making workshops and planning projects of cultural and social values together with all the volunteers, which also helped me to learn about project management, teamwork and cooperation even more. So working together also improved my team working skills and time management skills. Summing up we can say that such international programs help exploring the concepts in different areas and with different approaches in a way to deepen knowledge, discussion, debate and sharing of ideas, experiences and good practices among the youth community.
