My Validation Experience, Juan Enterría

[Juan Enterria]

My name is Juan Enterría. I come from a small city in the north of Spain. I am currently coursing the fourth year of a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering while I also study business, at the University of Oviedo. This year I am doing an Erasmus+ in Innsbruck, Austria, where I will finish my engineering bachelor.

During the last three years I have had the enormous pleasure to be granted a scholarship by the Fundación María Cristina Masaveu Peterson. Thanks to that, I have been able to study abroad during the summer, widening my knowledge in topics I am interested and getting to know new people and cultures.

My passion has always been sport. I started soon to play football for my local club. Then I also started running and cycling. That led to join a triathlon club for several years. Now I am playing in a rugby team while I practise many sports related to mountains and nature.

Due to my passion for sports, I decided in 2017 to join ONCE (Organización Nacional de Ciegos Españoles) as a volunteer for sport-related activities. I wanted to help other people that could not normally exercise on their own, as well as to feel the same the sense of pleasure I get. Since then I have taken part in many activities such as running, cycling, mountaineering, skiing or kayaking.

I never thought of getting recognition of the volunteering from my University but I think it is a great idea since volunteering, in my opinion, is not sufficiently rewarded and I also believe that it would encourage many young people to carry out volunteering activities. Participating in the eVA-VOL project has helped me to realise what I have learnt through volunteering. At the beginning it was not straight forward since those competences acquired through non-formal and informal learning are not so easy to perceive by yourself. Reading other people cases helped me to reflect on the actual learning and which situations led to acquire such competences.