Volunteering Stories: ”Caminante” – by Jacopo

Hi, my name is Jacopo and I come from Italy, more precisely from Collegno, a town near Torino. I decided to take on this volunteering experience abroad to continue building my path and to challenge myself in a new experience. After graduating, I felt a bit lost and uncertain about which direction to take.

As A. Machado writes in the poem Caminante: “Wanderer, there is no path, the path is made by walking.” This phrase represents the moment I am going through building my future by adding knowledge, different perspectives and experiences to my cultural and intellectual background. Before arriving in Romania and starting my collaboration with the association Team for Youth (T4UTH) in Baia Mare, I had already had several volunteering experiences. I took part in various Erasmus+ projects, in one of which, “Game of Jobs”, I worked as a facilitator. I also did volunteering work in the Scouts through AGESCI, within the Regina Margherita 1 group in Collegno.

Now I am nearing the end of this project, and although the experience has been different from what I had imagined, I can say that it has achieved the goals it had set and that were presented at the beginning of the project. Regarding the approach to a new country, I found it very easy. The mentors played a fundamental role, helping us integrate and making us feel part of the community from the very first days.

Thanks to their support, the adaptation was natural, allowing us to live this experience with greater peace of mind. Today I can say that Romania is no longer just the country that hosted me, but a place that I also feel is partly mine.

Over the course of these five months of volunteering, I have observed how the proposed activities evolved in parallel with our growth within the project.

In the early months, the activities were simpler, over time they did not necessarily become more complex, but rather deeper and more meaningful. Despite this evolution, a non-formal and participatory spirit has always remained central, which is the foundation of the project.

Although the activities carried out with schools and associations were the most frequent and important, the two experiences that will remain most vivid in my memory are the tour of the Maramureș region with my mentor Darius and the Mid-Term event organized by the Romanian National Agency in Bucharest. I believe that both contributed significantly to group cohesion and our collective growth. In particular, the Mid-Term was a valuable opportunity to meet other volunteers and compare our experiences, further enriching us.

In conclusion, this experience has allowed me to acquire new tools, perspectives, and knowledge that I will be able to use to make the most of my future experiences. I hope to be able to take part in other projects in the future and that each of them will give me the same emotions and the same personal enrichment that I experienced within the Team for Youth association.

I would also like to dedicate a thought to all the people who make experiences like this possible for us volunteers. I like to imagine them as stage set designers: essential figures who, although they remain behind the scenes, allow us “artists” to live and share our journey.

Without their work, none of this would be possible.

The content of this testimonial does not reflect the official opinion of the European Union. The responsibility for the information and views expressed in the article rests entirely with the author(s) The volunteer is coordinated by Team for Youth Association in ”Year5” project, a European Solidarity Corps volunteering activity in Baia Mare, project code 2025-1-RO01-ESC51-VTJ-000346804.