Sidonie

After my volunteering experience, I gained an enormous amount of social and personal skills. For example, confidence — the most obvious one — but also conflict management, listening skills, emotional awareness, self-knowledge, and so on.

I learned so much about people, solidarity and I continue on this path of solidarity in my current job, which consists of helping people with reduced mobility.

I found this job two weeks after I came back to France, and I got a permanent contract for the first time in my life, at 30 years old.

Pretty cool.

My vision of the future has broadened, and even if it’s a bit scary — the world is vast — I’ve found my place in it.

However, I have to be honest with you… Volunteering was the best experience of my life, still to this day. Every day was incredible, incredibly rich and full of life. I could write a whole book about it, that’s how inspired I am and how many memorable moments I lived.

This volunteering experience is a treasure. It’s my pride, a source of energy and endless joy.

But it’s in the past. It’s over.

And among the countless lessons I learned from volunteering, this one is fundamental: as humans, we are meant to live in the present.

This experience was so positive, so extraordinary, so amazing, that it was difficult when it ended — for a long time.

I’m not complaining, not at all.

This volunteering was the most beautiful gift I was ever given.

And I use this experience as a compass to keep moving forward.

That’s what Ani and I told each other when we met again, 2–3 years after finishing our volunteering.

“Yes, our volunteering was the best time of our lives, we agree on that. But right now, here, today, we’re both here, and this is an incredible moment — this is the best day. So let’s keep living days like this one''.