O testemunho final da Melissa (JFC - Culture)

 SPIN – last testimony.

For the past few weeks and days, I have been stubbornly postponing writing this last testimony of mine. I did not want to write it because that would mean that I would have to admit to myself, that my time as a volunteer is coming to an end. A lot has been happening, and if I would need to summarise everything, the first word that comes to my mind is „home“. I still feel a bit overwhelmed trying to put a full stop behind this experience and wrapping it all up. I would not know where to begin and where to stop but let’s try! 

During the past months and weeks, covid restrictions have been mostly lifted, and not only has the library become more alive but also our nights on the still-warm streets of Lisbon. For me, it was amazing to finally welcome children into the library and to see my colleagues cheer for me because they were super happy for me too. We also went on a walking tour through the Bairro with school kids, walking past all the amazing street art and graffiti of our beloved neighbourhood. On the last working day, I went to have a shared dinner with my colleagues, who definitely have become more than just colleagues. I am super happy about their support, because all they ever wanted, was for me to have a good time. I remember, that when I was a bit sick, they brought soup for me.

I am happy to say that, even though I finished work, I still have some days left in this most beautiful city. I will spend them with all of my friends, fresh Superbock, and vegan pastel de nata. Looking back at the past year, makes me feel grateful beyond expression. I am grateful for all the people I have met, especially for those, that I will take with me in my heart. I am grateful for the miradouros, for the food and the drinks. I am grateful for an experience, that changed me for the better, that made me consider different perspectives and learn more about myself by learning about others. 

I will carry the Spin spirit with me wherever I go and I will for sure never forget about the warm-hearted people, which I will without a doubt, come to visit soon.

O testemunho no. 2 da Melissa (JFC - Culture)

Oh how time flies… after almost seven months I cannot even start to describe the great memories I have made. 

Even though the library is still only functioning on a basic level due to the pandemic, my bond with my colleagues has nevertheless gotten so much closer and I still enjoy walking through the door every day! 

On 25 de abril, the national holiday the Junta de Freguesia Carnide organises a concert on wheels and together with a band, my coworkers and a police escort, we drove through the streets of Carnide at night to celebrate the anniversary of the liberation from the dictatorship. I really liked that in this night, I could not only connect more to my coworkers, but also to Portugal’s traditions and history. I already experienced the 25th de abril celebrations in Erasmus, but this was definitely a special moment for me.

The lockdown in January, February and March was hard for all of us I think but it only meant that afterwards, we enjoyed our time outside and together even more. I really feel that together with the other volunteers, we have grown to be a little family, doing trips together, sharing a beer at night and always welcoming new volunteer faces once in a while!

For me, it was also super nice, to see Lisbon nightlife coming back to life! Although we all still need to be careful, it is awesome to rediscover life music in intendente area or meet other international students in Erasmus corner.

A few of my favorite memories are for sure my first surfing lesson in Carcavelos (finally a true Portuguese!) and also our trips to Setúbal or Sintra. I love to see the endless beaches of Portugal and just as much, the beautiful gardens of Sintra. Because the time we spent together is always so full of special moments, I feel like I already made some friends, that will stick with me beyond the time of this volunteering and I am not the only one thinking about staying in Lisbon even longer.

Life does absolutely not get boring here, but only better and better. I am looking forward more than ever to the upcoming summer months, to an already planned trip to Porto and to a lot more afternoons at the beach. Chin chin to volunteering in Lisbon!

O testemunho no 1. da Melissa (JFC - Culture)

I am Melissa, a 23 year old German girl and as of November 2020 officially one of the lucky volunteers in Lisbon!

I already lived in Lisbon in 2018/2019 and I completely fell in love with the city. For me, taking part in a volunteering program was a way of giving back to the city and the community that brought so much joy to me.

I arrived one week before the first meeting with the other (lovely!) volunteers and staff, and so I had some time to see old friends again, visit my favourite spots of downtown Lisbon and most of all: enjoy the view! Of course I noticed that the streets looked emptier than before, because the ongoing pandemic keeps tourists stuck in their home countries. However, the bright atmosphere of the city still gets me every time.

After moving in to my flat and starting to feel home again, Spin hosted the welcoming day at their office! Together with the other volunteers, we shared an absolutely delicious vegan meal prepared by Spin, shared our ideas and expectations, and challenged each other in a team rally around the neighbourhood of Bairro Padre Cruz. Giulia provided us with all the information we could have needed and all in all I really enjoyed this warm hearted welcome at Spin!

On Wednesday, 11th of November, I had my first day of work at Biblioteca Natália Correia. Giulia met me at the entrance of the library to introduce me to my new colleagues. We were welcomed by Rosário Cotrim, my new boss which whom we would go on to share a nice talk and many laughs. After she showed us around in the library, I decided to stay until closing time to spend my first day at the library. Due to the pandemic, the library is only open to the public for three and a half hours per day and social projects are mostly on hold. Nevertheless, I really enjoy going to work everyday, to share thoughts, many many laughters and my first Portuguese sentences with my colleagues.

After roughly two weeks into this new life, I can say that I am looking forward more than ever to the upcoming months. To everything that me and my team at work will achieve and to every drink shared over a good view with my new volunteer friends!

 

Justin’s testimony No.2

Most of the times we focus to much on the things, that went wrong, that make us angry, sad and disappointed, but at the same time when we try to focus on the awesome, the great, the fantastic, we realize we don’t have something to focus on, reflecting the good things seems impossible when we analyze it. Because it is difficult to pinpoint down to the exact moment, when things went from nice to great.

I have been in Lisbon for three months now, if you ask yourself, Justin your first testimony was released in April, can’t you count? Well I can, but i had to spent one month in Germany for my exams which went well, now I can finally call myself out of school. A long overdue thing anyway, at one point I felt, I cannot grow there anymore, so I am truly glad that this chapter has ended.

Maybe I am still in the first phase of the culture shock, but I love it here, despite the fact  that there are large problems.

One of the things that I love so much here is, that I am able to get to know so many people with their own fascinating backgrounds, and facettes of personality, which couldn’t be more different to each other. Not only meeting people though, but also the friendships that I have built here, make my happiness lasting.

It is strange though, there are people, who clearly live in past events, which makes it impossible for us to, if these events were not particularly good from both sides, act normally with each other or make up for it, and see or at least try to see that person, not as it were before those incidents, but as some abstract painting, in which we discover everytime we see it something new. Like the paintings in an art museum in Belém, that I would name, if it wasn’t for the fact, that it’d be advertisement.

Personally I can live with that. I am not drowning in a pool of emotions nor freezing in the tundra of receiving coldness, because on the other hand there are people who live in the future, and if something bad happens, we talk about it, speak frankly with each other what we feel and what we want in the future, and both sides actively listen, and even if we cannot at all moments sort it out, we feel better afterwards anyway.

The thing with being so young as me, 18 years old, only meeting people around the age of 24+, I can learn so much from these people, which is another great thing, because, when I will get back to Germany after my ESC, I will have a different kind of maturity than that of other people my age will have, just because I could observe and learn from a peer group very different to my „usual“ peers. At the same time it means however, that I have the special ability to quickly annoy people because it is such a big difference in peers and that for getting respect I have to work double as hard, which is understandable, but can at times be very ironic.

On Tuesday I went to a standup-comedy thing, by the way i realized, I definitively have to start again writing, one of the performers made some jokes, obviously, also I just realized, that me retelling the joke isn’t really funny, because the joke wasn’t in the first place.

Anyway one last thing, which for me is of paramount importance, that I feel the need for to share with everybody, that I never can ever not stress enough, because its significance for me is so high, and I had to endure so much to get to the point, where I could finally achieve it, I took the Cambridge assesement in March and I have shown level 3* abilities or in other words, english level C2. 

Testimony on Emergency Pedagogy Training Course in Lisbon

01.06.2019

When I woke up after my nightshift in the hospital, I saw an announcement for a trainingcourse on the topic “Emergency Pedagogy”. All and sudden, I was completely awake.

This was something I wanted to participate in for a long time. As I already knew the organisation “Friends of Waldorf Education”, I was even more interested. And so I applied. And luckily I got accepted to learn a lot about trauma, crisis situations and Traumatology as well as Emergency Pedagogy.

Every morning in Lisbon, as a beginning of the day, we stood together in the Morning Circle and played fingergames, sang, spoke a poem and started the day as one group. As I would learn later, this helps a lot to bring groups together, to identify as a group, everyone does the same, no matter where you come from, how smart you are or what language you speak. This might be very helpful in my work as a pediatric nurse in a mental healthcare hospital as well, because I often need to bring groups together, the youngsters and children have special life situations and often feel, they need to prove who they are. 

My favorite part of the training course were the speeches, held by Bernd Ruf, the founder of Emergency Pedagogy, who described the term Trauma as a wound of the soul. And also these wounds need first aid in a crisis situation. This is a “picture” that lasted in my mind for a long time. If the soul, that kind of connects the body, is hurt, how could children live a normal life when the balance between physical body and soul is disrupted? Back at work in the hospital, I looked even more differently at the children and youngsters. I know their past, but do I know where and how badly their souls got hurt?

What also surprised me is, that the “outcome” of the therapeutic intervention of trauma, is very different according to the childs protective- and risk factors. And this often has to do with social-economical factors and is about how the child was raised. How old is the child? What has he or she already experienced in life? How do the parents deal with the situation? So one could say, that the basis to overcome trauma is already different from child to child.

During my work as a pediatric nurse in the mental health care hospital, I work with many different disorders and clusters of symptomps; for me it was very interesting, that Bernd Ruf told us, that often after a trauma the biography of the affected child is kind of disrupted and the child might, as a result, behave auto-aggressive, suicidal or aggressive towards their environment. So I began to look at the behavior of my patients during a normal day on our ward – how were their reactions, how do they feel in the group, how were they able to endure their own disorders and the daily life with it.

As a result of our training course I learned that in our work, we need to include all senses to achieve balance physically, morally and with the soul. And I really think, that we experienced that in the training course as well by singing, painting, working with clay, by the physical exercises and listening to each other. If we train the outer balance, we are able to influence the inner balance. I want to create a safe place for my patients, a place where they can turn their life experience, that might content a traumatic event in the past, into a chance.

And by that chance, change their lives into something they feel safe within. Their own body and mind.

By Julia Neitzke

Training course on Emergency Pedagogy – a personal testimony

From crisis to chance, from Germany to Portugal, from anticipation to a great experience – that was my way to a week full of inspirations with a great community and a lot of learning! We started our week with a "Welcoming Aperitivo" in the first evening to get to know each other, to figure out from which of the eight countries we all came from and, even more important, what was our motivation to join this training course!

Moreover we got a short and interesting insight how the hosting organisation "SPIN" was established in "Bairro Padre Cruz", a suburb of Lisbon: an old, destructed primary school became a "social hostel" by the long and hard effort of lots of volunteers! A great community work, that ended up in a center for intercultural exchanges, training courses, study visits or for other social and educational  international activities!

Study visit of a local social organisation

As it used to be every day, we started the first morning with a morning circle. It had the impact to really get awake and to focuse the day and following activities. Specially one important phrase we did each morning I kept in mind: "The high sky above me, the firmed earth below me, the good spirit within me." - and actually it already was an important ritual of workers of "emergency pedagogy", the main topic oft he training course. This phrase is a  method to get grounded and to regain the control about the own body after a traumatic event.

This is only one example for a practical exercise of emergency pedagogy we learnt. We had a lot of workshops regarding arts and movement. I was wondering about drawings of traumatised children, in which the houses weren´t grounded anymore! They were kind of "flying" in the mid of the picture and only sometimes there was at least a leader to reach the ground from the house. These children had lost all there constancy in their lifes because of traumatic events and for example with restructered days, joyful moments, movements (e.g. playing with a ball in a special model or finger plays), music (e.g. singing together) and other kinds of arts (e.g. modelling, drawing) it´s possible to help most of them at least to get out of their first shock!

Ending: Opening of flowers
of wishes

In the everyday lessons of the founder of emergency pedagogy Bernd Ruf, we learned many theoretical backgrounds of what happens physically and psychologically after having experienced a traumatic event (such as nature catastrophies, war or severe illnesses) and how to overcome the state of shock. The key point is to rebuild the feeling of safety and to restructure the confused inner and external rhythms that got confused or even lost. A personal highlight for me was the visit of an other local social organisation of Lisbon which is engaged in youngster´s social inclusion and the personal interchange with refugees! Once more I deeply understood how important it is to be open to interact, work and share life with people of other countries and/or cultures and to help people in need! Of course this intercultural interchange took place among us as participants of the training course as well and I really enjoyed it! We discussed about political situations of our home country, issues in society and similarities and differences regarding our personal social work  respectively social/psychological studies or profession. This was even integrated in the program by an "Intercultural evening", where we shared food and special stories of our home countries.


I really hope all the participants will remain connected, developing and spreading the issues of emergency pedagogy in their local area as well as in an European network! Personally as I am working as a volunteer in a social project of my city, I will bring in the knowledge I got during this training course whenever it seems to be relevant. Moreover I will try to promote the concept of emercency pedagogy for example through a short presentation with practical input in an association where I worked in a project for social inclusion of refugeed children and families. As I am currently studying Psychology, I can also imagine to later work in the field of traumatology and emergency pedagogy and to get more trained in it by special courses. Future will let me know how to actually turn this in reality!:)

Finally I want to thank all the people who helped to organize and create this trainings course and all the participants, who were really open to share their experiences, knowledge and feelings and made it possible to create a great community!

Until we meet again…


by Bettina Schwarz

O testimunho do Justin

It was a cold day in March, raindrops dripping on my window, when I checked Gmail on my mobile
phone. I'd been expecting this mail for weeks and indeed it had finally arrived. Alas the answer was not what i had expected! My application for a grant for university was denied. I was furious. How could they reject the application, i thought while preparing a sandwich. I was more furious though, when I noticed that in my bread there was a worm. Luck, it seems, did not favour me.

The next day I did not want to even touch my mobile, which was the bringer of bad news to me, but fortunately i did, for I received a message by the European Solidarity Corps, saying an organization was in need of a volunteer. That organization was Spin in Lisbon. I applied and the rest is history.

Coming to Lisbon by bus is tiring to say the least, it was like an 40 hour long drive, but it is also quite charming, because you could get to know fellow travelers, which i did not as i assumed the role of a mute. No, I am kidding of course. I met a Bavarian in Lederhosen, a girl with whom i had a great conversation, and many other people of all kinds and creeds. The bus was crossing the Vasca da Gama bridge, dark clouds covered the skyline of Lisbon, somehow everything being of gigantic size, I did not fully grasp the reality of it all. It was more like a dream, everything distant, surreal even.

This changed, however, once i left the safety of the bus and walked my first steps in Lisbon. I would have just stood still, taking the moment in, the screaming, the smell, the colors, if it weren't for the people, who pushed past me.

I got my luggage and greeted Agnes, a volunteer and flatmate to be from Estonia, who welcomed me. Having charged the metro card, Agnes and i waited for Miguel, another volunteer and flatmate to be from Spain, who shortly thereafter arrived. Together we went to our flat, my new home for the next nine months. What the flat lacks in size, it makes up in style. I like it. I know very descriptive.

Anyways, once inside I got to know Marina, also a new volunteer, who had arrived just hours prior to me. I unpacked my stuff, all of us had a delicious dinner. Then we went to the good-bye party of Monika, who had finished her EVS. To be honest i was a bit overwhelmed, so many new faces, names, places, and being tired really didn't help the socializing.

The next day was my first day at Spin, where Agnieszka, a Polish volunteer, Marina and i received a prep-talk by Inés, explaining how everything works, general rules, insurance etc.. After that we had a most delicious welcoming lunch. Then the three of us and another Monika went to explore the neighbourhood of Bairro Padre Cruz, see blow and discover what we discovered!

SEED Journal

The first phase of the SEED - Sustainable Empowerment through Experiencing Diversity has come to an end. Read below a few words directly from the participants in the event!

June, 22nd:

This morning, we got up early because it was a bit noisy. We were tired because of the long way to Lisbon. We have breakfast together with the Portuguese and have taken together some things in the Hostel. We can`t get out alone, only in break we went out in the streets of Lisbon.

We liked the nature, the modest area. Everything was already the weather and many different things. Then we came back and ate for lunch (it consisted of: turbo soup, noodle with sauce, for dessert there was melon) then we did something together again; Rescheduled and some things explained then we are back out and were in a small supermarket. We liked it today. Now the others prepare the dinner while we write the diary. Today was cool and tomorrow will be even better and more beautiful. We wish us nice weather and good mood. :)

June, 23rd:

Today we woke up, took a shower and after that we dressed up. We had breakfast and then we made 5 groups which had to search for paper notes on which were written tasks. As we made all the tasks, the teachers collected the notes and read them out loud to everybody. Later we had a small exercise where there was one person in the middle and all the others had to split up and run away from him. After he catches somebody he needs to take his hand and then walk together with him to catch the remaining people. Then it was time for Lunch. We ate salada russa, it´s a Russian salad.

After lunch we made groups again and every group received an apple and an egg. The apple needed to be traded to something else that’s worth more and the egg should be returned cooked. The catch was that everything should be done outside the hostel, we asked strangers to trade with us and cook the egg for us. At 16:30 we met at the local school and went together to the Arraial Festival close by. Some people played soccer and some listened to the music. Then we returned to the hostel and everyone got asked how they feel and tell something about how the trip is going so far. Then it was dinner time, we ate chili con carne and baba ganoush. In the evening we watched the soccer match between Germany and Sweden.

June, 24th:

Dear Diary,

today we went to the Museu da Eletrecidade. We learned a lot about technology. It was interesting. 

After that we went to a park and had a picknick where we ate pastel de belém. It was very delicious. We had some free time and looked around the beautiful city and played games.

June, 25th:

Dear Diary,

today we had a workshop where we played games and spoke about cyberbullying. We learned that social media is a big place where bullying is happening. 

When lunch was finished we went to association “Bola p´ra frente”. There we upcycled trash to keychains and watched videos about 5 min. hacks. Then we went home.

Later, we will have German intercultural night.