My Personal Metamorphosis

Curiosity for another part of the world, a love for mountains and a strong need to do something meaningful for others brought me to Santiago de Chile. I changed a cushy and not very demanding job for an environment full of cultural and social challenges, moving almost 13,000 km to a continent I have never been to before and started to volunteer for an organization taking care of children at social risk.

I have been working in a residential house for girls, who were placed there because of problems in their families. Some of them have a chance to return later to living with their relatives, others spend all their childhood there. I take care of 24 girls from the age of 5 to 15 years. I pick them up from schools, help with homework, teach a little of English, organize free time activities, bring them to doctors, play games, etc. Every day I face new situations which change me as person.

Before coming here I would never describe myself as patient. I have always had a tendency to take everything to heart, to get frustrated when I don’t succeed and to be anxious when I wait for something and have the impression that it is not going to happen. Now, patience helps me with dealing with one of the biggest challenges here – motivating girls to participate in activities. They often lack interest or lose it after 5 minutes of doing something. It happens a lot that when I start a game or workshop, I hear ‘it’s boring’, ‘I don’t want to do that’, ‘do I really have to….?’. Such situations used to hold me back from coming up with new ideas and taking initiative. But then I realized that I can start doing what I wanted to do and ignore negative comments.

Eventually, some girls begin to react to my questions or to ask what I’m doing. When some of them get interested, others may take an example of them. If they still don’t want to take part in an activity, I can try it another day and their attitude is different. I just can’t let anything let discourage me from trying again and again in order to achieve my goals. Building a good relationship with girls takes time and nothing is done immediately when I want it. But, if I don’t withdraw when I don’t manage to do something once, I am surprised by the positive results later on.

I’m sure that after 4 months of volunteering here I’ll be a different person. Every day I learn new things such as creativity, flexibility or consistency. I face situations that make me see life from another perspective and I think it over. I overcome obstacles like my own insecurity, girls’ changing moods, and their behaviour that I sometimes don’t understand. It’s been an amazing and precious experience!