16 dezembro 2013

SVE na Islândia - Carolina Maia

I finished my graduation last year and wanted to travel and have a new experience… 

I heard about EVS and I started to look for environmental projects, specifically in Iceland… It’s a country that I really wanted to visit and environment is an issue that interests me a lot! The project sounded really good… 

I arrived at Reykjavík on the second of June 2013.
First I got to know my new home… a house full of people, (a very good flat , I should say), where I barely could open the front door with so many shoes at the entrance, then I talked with some really nice people and I felt very comfortable there…

The next day I went to my first work camp in the south of Iceland (in a town named Kirkjubaejarklaustur) and it was just perfect… the work consisted in gardening and building hiking paths… as the majority of SEEDS work camps. 

Then, time passed flying… 
I continued until now in different projects, some similar to the first one and some entitled as ‘environmental awareness’ – hosted by SEEDS and always in Reykjavik– on these specific work camps I was responsible for orienting workshops related to recycling, food wasting, eco-friendly life style, organic gardening, among other topics… 











Until now I have lead 10 different work camps, had the opportunity to travel around Iceland, know about its Icelandic culture and met a lot of different people… It has been an amazing experience, very open minding… I recommend this experience to everyone and I think I will continue doing projects like this…

A little bit more about SEEDS work camps… A group of volunteers work and develop together a project which has been proposed by a local community who contacted SEEDS to request some volunteers in order to do it. SEEDS work camps generally last for 2 weeks. 

The types of the projects developed are mainly related to nature issues or environmental oriented, and they can be, for instances, the building of walking paths or hiking trails, cleaning the coastline, reforestation and erosion control works, construction or renovation of a community building, monument or community centre, ecological research, removing invasive growth (luppina), etc... 

These work camps bring together volunteers from different nationalities and backgrounds aiming at building up international understanding and therefore encouraging peace while working for an identified need of the local community. Group sizes vary between 5 and 12 participants.


Carolina Maia

0 comentários:

Enviar um comentário