Unfortunately, if you
are young, ambitious, a big dreamer and you are always thinking on improving
yourself as much as possible, Spain is probably not the best country to live in at
the moment. So many things have changed compared with a couple of years ago;
now the government is not that interested in supporting people who want to make
good careers anymore because they have other ‘priorities’. There were no jobs,
bad faces, not so many choices, and too much broken dreams around me. It was a
toxic environment; that’s why I needed another way of thinking and some fresh
air. Looking at the EVS (European Volunteer Service) program, I found a
“Youth-Worker” organization based on many Christian values called Atlantic
Bridge in which I could fit perfectly. I applied, I was accepted and, since a
few months ago I’ve been living in Zeeland, the southwest province of The
Netherlands.
But first of all, let
me introduce myself. I am Diego Fernando, I am from Colombia originally but I
spent the last 9 years in Spain. That’s a long story for another day. I really
love Spain but I really consider that this is not the time for me to be there.
Currently I live in a
big house in a small village with eight other amazing people from all over the
world. We are so much different from each other but, at the same time, we are
so similar. We, luckily, found the way to mix all of our different ways of
living, languages, customs and even religious backgrounds to get into a really
good team: people who cook together, work together, travel together and
support each other.
And it is quite interesting how when someone asks me about what we do as a team in our daily work
with Atlantic Bridge, the first thing that came up is “share with others what
we experience together: 9 volunteers from 8 different countries with different
“everything”, have learned how to become a team in spite of the cultural,
religious, ethnic and communication walls between them. We, as a team, are
learning how to create meaningful moments, ‘clicks’, but at the same time we
share with others how to do it.
One of the activities
of Atlantic Bridge, the organization I am now volunteering for, is to help
young people find their roots, especially their spiritual roots. That’s why,
together with the other volunteers, we organized a Heritage Hunt in Antwerp
last Sunday. It was a lot of work and a lot of fun. We tried our best and we
received many positive feedback. From now, I guess this is the beginning of
some more adventures in building new bridges and exploring new worlds.