O testemunho no. 1 da Lucia (Viver Telheiras)

 

Hey there!

My name is Lucia, I’m a 25-year-old Italian girl and at the beginning of November I moved to Lisbon to take part in an ESC project. 

In the last years, many friends of mine have participated in some ESC projects, and all of them gave me very positive feedbacks about their experiences. This made me want to be personally involved in a volunteering project abroad. So after finishing my university studies, I started looking for such initiatives and sending applications. 

One summer day, as I was checking out some vacancies, a project in Lisbon caught my attention, I applied, went through the selection process and luckily here I am!

I arrived in Lisbon at the beginning of November and it was love at first sight with the city and its people. I had never been to Portugal before, so I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but I felt welcomed from the very first day. Moreover, when my plane landed at the airport a member of the Spin’s crew was there waiting for me and helped me to reach my accommodation, an apartment which I share with other five international volunteers. 

As me and the other new volunteers had some free days during the first week, we decided to take advantage of our free time and the lovely sunny weather to enjoy Lisbon in a “tourist mode”. 

Then from the second week I started volunteering in Viver Telheiras, which facilitates community dynamics in a neighbourhood of Lisbon. In this period many of the social and cultural activities that this organization used to promote got suspended due to Covid, but the hope is that the situation will get better in the next months.

In the meantime, I’m learning how do the members of the association work together and how do they implement their projects and initiatives for the neighbourhood. Step by step I’m getting more familiar with this new environment and gaining new knowledges.

These first weeks in Lisbon have been awesome and I can’t wait to see what the next months have in store for me.