Volunteering Stories: From L’Arca by Csilla

Dear Readers,

My name is Csilla Szász and I come from near Târgu Mureș, Romania. To describe myself very shortly, I consider myself a person who likes nature, travel, and likes to get to know the world she lives in. Being guided by these basic wills, I came to Belvedere Marittimo a little bit more than one month ago, and now I am writing this short post from amidst the hills of this place situated near to the sea, the south of Italy.

More specifically I came to a farm called Fattoria L’Arca as an ESC volunteer. Besides liking to travel, I had multiple reasons to come, amongst which are to learn more about farming, to get to know this part of Italy, to be able to spend my time outside and to be in touch with nature. Another reason was that based on my precious experiences I know how much volunteering projects can enrich me as a person, and I wanted to be part of such a thing again, so I was happy when I found out that I got accepted.

We started the experience by getting to know each other, our surroundings and the work. Step by step we got to know the place and we got acquainted with the work here and we started working. The work we do here consists mainly of gardening – preparing the soil for the plants, planting, taking care of the plants and harvesting. We also have to do a little bit of animal care, we have the task to close the chicken in the evening and we learned how to milk goats, which has been fun!

I can say that the work here is very diverse, which means that each day looks a little bit different. And there’s the chance to learn something new, and in my case during the work I learned some ‘tricks’ about farming which I didn’t know before.

And besides work, we had fun activities such as rafting, tortellini making workshop, pottery and basket making workshop – these workshops give us another chance to learn new things.

But: being here doesn’t only consist of work! During these two months we are entitled to have holidays as well, and we already had the first part of our holidays. Some people decided to go to Napoli and some people went to Palermo. So next to the work we have the chance to discover other Italian cities.

And if this wouldn’t be enough, since this is a group volunteering, we make friends from all over Europe and not only, we share our lives together and learn from each other every day. All in all I can say that I am part of a great experience. I highly recommend everyone to try it once!

Csilla is volunteering in a two month mobility project in Italy. If you are from Romania and are interested in having a similar experience, contact us directly or complete our ”waiting list” so we can contact you, here: https://forms.gle/nQbqr5NTY89MRgo29