My validation experience, by Clara Sánchez-Calero Morales, from Spain

[clarasanc...@gmail.com]

I'm a fourth year student of the bachelor's degree of International Studies at the University Carlos III of Madrid.

Ever since I was young, I dreamed of traveling to Africa, and as I grew up I became aware of the huge inequalities across countries and societies worldwide, thus somehow I felt the need of doing something for those that did not have the same opportunities I had for enjoying a fulfilling life. Hence, I had my first volunteering experience when I was 19 years old in a small village called Arusha, in the Kilimanjaro region in Tanzania. I worked with a spanish NGO called Born to Learn, on a beautiful project that aimed at building a school for 300 children that never got the opportunity to be educated. I thought I would contribute to improve the lives of the people we cooperated with, but actually these people and the whole experience helped me instead to realize who am I and how I want to live.

Then, I did an exchange year in Marseille (France) for a whole academic year with the Erasmus+ program, and I also felt impotent by seeing on a daily basis so many people (entire families) sleeping on the streets, that I joined les Restos du Coeur which is an association that runs a day-centre for providing basic services (meals, showers, internet, clothes...) for homeless people.

My third and more recent volunteering experience was in the Greek island of Lesvos, with an NGO called Refugee4Refugees that runs several projects of humanitarian nature for migrants and refugees arriving at the shores of Europe. We worked closed to the Moria Camp and I basically went there because I've studied and read so many times about the wrongly so-called "refugee crisis" (which is more like an EU crisis), that I needed to do something about it. I learned so much, and I realized that my career path would be to specialize in asylum and refugee law.

The eVA-VOL project has been an opportunity to portray all these learnings and skills I've acquired while volunteering, that I've always thought would matter just for my personal development but actually are just another way of acquiring knowledge. Unfortunately, my university has not participated on the validation of credits, despite of my efforts. However, I believe eVA-VOL to be a great project to promote volunteering and to recognize the important value that volunteering has had for me, and in general, for young people's minds and hearts.