With this last blog I want to tell you the final part of my volunteering journey: the Munich experience.
It was a fast, but intense, trip because I arrived in Germany on Friday 31st of May at night and I went home the 2nd of June in the morning. The beginning wasn’t promising because my flixbus was three hours late and since my first minute I got there it was raining very heavily, and it never stopped while I was there. I was really scared that the activity that we planned for the social impact days would be cancelled because our main goal was to go outside the StuStaCulum festival, a famous event in Munich organized by students for students, to ask to young people that should vote at the next European elections a few questions about that topic. To make it more accaptivating we decide to create a quiz on how the European elections work, so we had a list of 20 questions, and the idea was to ask 5 questions to each person and if they answered correctly to 3/5 of them, we would give them candies as a price. This was an initiative created to sensibilize young votants to how important is to express our idea as future generation.
So, Saturday 1st of June, after a typical bavarese lunch and a wet city tour around the main places in the centre, we tried to do our event, but it was raining so much that we decided to do it in the subway at Studentstadt, the exit close to the festival. I don’t know if it was because of the weather or because it was too early (we went there around 4pm) or a mix of that, but at the beginning the metro was not so busy as expected. Despite this, we continued to stay there for around two hours and a half and then we found few people that participated to our quiz. Almost 95% of the people that we interviewed gave us all the correct answers and just a few people made one or two mistakes but in general the level of knowledge was good. I was surprised because I’m the first that couldn’t answer properly to all of them and realising that was very sad, so it pushed me indirectly to have a better knowledge of the situation before going to vote.
I think an activity like this should be done in each city to help the young generation to be more curious about what happens in Europe. I speak every day with a lot of people that barely know if they will go to vote or not and, in case they decide to go, what to vote for.
Before saying goodbye and conclude this adventure, I want to share with you a few reflections because I feel so lucky that this opportunity was presented to me over 1500 people that were in Sevilla with me during the Erasmus Generation Meeting 2024.
First of all it helped me personally because I’m an introvert, so sharing with other people my thoughts is very difficult for me, but also the idea of going alone in another country and spending time with people that I don’t know at all and entering in their reality was scaring me but thanks to this experience I learned that it’s not like this, especially inside an environment like ESN where people welcomed me in a very nice and friendly way.
This initiative, which happened with the Erasmus Generation in Action project, also allowed me to visit places that I’ve never been before, even though they are not so far from Italy, and to discover new cultures that are different from mine not only when it comes to the monuments or in the food but also in the people. Greece was sunny, warm, full of cats, but also with beautiful sunsets and kind people. Munich was rainy, not so warm but full of young people with big initiatives.
Last but not least, the various types of activities that I participated in helped me to open my mind about different themes. For example, the turtles’ rehabilitation centre that we visited in Greece was full of volunteers and I didn’t expect that so many young people would move from all over the world to work there following their passion. But also discovering how they act every day to help those animals is something incredible because they constantly save their lives with medications but also with small actions when they hatch from their eggs on the beaches.
On the other hand, from Munich, it was so good seeing how much young people care about their future and want to do activities to sensibilize other people like them on the topic of elections and civic engagement.
I hope that from my blogs and what I shared on the social media you could feel the same feelings that I had during the trips and I hope that you also had discovered something that was new and valuable for you.
Thanks for reading my articles!!
With love,
Giulia
