Faye’s experience with OCC

Hi! My name is Faye Hagedorn. I am from the Netherlands and I’m 18 years old. Currently I’m taking a gap year, and I just returned from my short term project of two months in Greece.

I applied for this project because I was super interested in learning more about the field in which OCC is active, working towards the inclusion of refugees and migrants. Apart from that I wanted to spend my gap year learning new things, getting out of my comfort zone and meeting new people. Covid-19 made this hard to do in the Netherlands, so when I saw the application for volunteering in OCC I immediately applied.

My tasks in the organization consisted of several things. Firstly, I was teaching English classes to the level 3 students. This taught me a lot about how to structure and plan classes. Unfortunately, due to Covid-19 restrictions, I wasn’t able to teach English and do activities with children like it was originally planned. I did however participate in a new project called Eco Salon, which is part of the already existing project Women’s Space.

I liked working on this a lot, since I loved the idea of creating a safe space where all women are welcome. In general I look back on my experience in OCC with a smile. I met so many amazing people, all from very different countries. I think I learned a lot of things only from talking to all these people, and they made the whole experience complete. Living in the flats was really fun, as we gathered a lot and the whole atmosphere was very welcoming and we spent a lot of time together with the whole team. I liked that we shared food and usually ate together, because it really felt like I was part of a family. We also did a lot of activities in our free time, like going on bike trips or camping. Polykastro is a really small town, and even though it has it is charms, it was very nice to see the area around it. I hope that I will have the chance to participate in more projects working in this field in the future,

but now I will have to start focusing on university:) I am very happy I had the opportunity to help OCC and to travel to Greece, and hopefully I will come sometime!

"This project is funded by the EU Commission, the ESC program and the Greek National Agency Youth and Lifelong Learning INEDIVIM."