"The people I lived with and the friendships that were formed whilst over there successfully managed to get rid of any feelings of being ‘out-of-place’, and I eventually began to feel more and more at home in a country that is a pleasure to live in, doing my European Voluntary Service in a school and with people who made it both a special and rewarding experience."
John C.
"My name is John and I am a 23 year old ex-student, from Sheffield. I have just completed 6 months of European Voluntary Service in Uruguay where I was involved in the day to day activities in an English Language School called the Guildford Ingles-Espanol School. It was incredible taking part in something such as this, as I had no previous experience doing anything in this field. The school was run by an extremely friendly and fantastic person, Irene Varela.
My role at the School was to put together and teach 2-hour lessons, I was encouraged to use topics for the lessons which interested me and to just generally converse with the students in English whilst encouraging them and correcting any mistakes they would make both during the conversations and in any tasks they were set. In addition to the daily lessons I would teach I was very involved in a youth-based scheme called Adobe Youth Voices. This involved the School inviting less privileged children from nearby ‘barrios’ or neighbourhoods and giving them the opportunity to learn some basic English, or build on any English they already had and use this to create a video about topics that affected them e.g. Alcohol Abuse, Drugs, Pollution. This was a very interesting and rewarding scheme and I was very happy to have been given the chance to take part in it. Perhaps one of the most satisfying and pleasing things for me personally was the completion of the videos and seeing them being shown the delight of the children involved at seeing their videos both on the internet, and on a big screen. I was responsible for both teaching the children the English they needed and assisting in the creation of the videos.
I spent the majority of my time in Uruguay in Montevideo which was, for me, a lively, beautiful city with lots of traditional architecture and amazing shops and markets. It is situated on the banks of the Rio Negro and there were many evenings spent strolling along the river-side path, named ‘La Rambla’. The Rio Negro is so vast that it creates the impression of it being by the sea and as the weather gradually improved, so did the feeling of being somewhere special. The people in Uruguay were very welcoming once I managed to become less concerned by the obvious language barrier created by my complete lack of Spanish, but this was no real issue. The people I lived with and the friendships that were formed whilst over there successfully managed to get rid of any feelings of being ‘out-of-place’, and I eventually began to feel more and more at home in a country that is a pleasure to live in, doing my European Voluntary Service in a school and with people who made it both a special and rewarding experience. "
John C., Long Term EVS Volunteer in Uruguay.
Project part of BREAKING BARRIERS
BUILDING PARTNERSHIP
and supported by EACEA
BUILDING PARTNERSHIP
and supported by EACEA
and the Youth in Action Programme
of the European Commission.
For more information about BREAKING BARRIERS BUILDING PARTNERSHIP, visit the special webapge in clicking here.
For more information about BREAKING BARRIERS BUILDING PARTNERSHIP, visit the special webapge in clicking here.
