{"id":36452,"date":"2025-08-05T14:50:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T11:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maailmanvaihto.fi\/?p=36452"},"modified":"2025-08-05T15:04:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T12:04:13","slug":"gnocchi-growth-and-new-beginnings-my-volunteering-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maailmanvaihto.fi\/en\/gnocchi-growth-and-new-beginnings-my-volunteering-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Gnocchi, Growth, and New Beginnings \u2013 My Volunteering Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi, I\u2019m Nicole<\/strong> from north-east Italy and I volunteer at Maailmanvihto\u2019s office for the first half of 2025. In October 2024 I completed my Bachelor degree, but I felt so lost after that with no idea of what I would like to do after.<\/p>\n

For this reasons after my graduation I started to look for an European Solidarity Corps<\/a> project and in November I found the offer at Maailmanvihto. Before it I had never thought of Helsinki or Finland as a possible destination for my ESC project, but the offer seams like it was the right one for me. So the day of the deadline I apply and in a few days I received a mail for an interview; some months after I was in a flight to Finland.<\/p>\n

When I first arrived, the wheatear was foggy and rainy; but expect for the it Helsinki was very welcoming, from the people in the office to the friends I make long the way.<\/p>\n

The first days into the office were a little bit overwhelming with a lot of new stuff to learn, but with time everything settle down and in the people in the project let me take my time to understand everything without any pressure.<\/p>\n

At the beginning, everything seemed exiting: I was in a new place, exploring a new city, taking the metro every day, (it felt so strange since I come from the country side), and meeting new people. I also enjoyd getting in a new routine, understanding how to move in the city, and getting closer with people I met.<\/p>\n

With me getting in the routine, I also started to experience the first challenges: the feeling of homesickness and the difficulty of living in a different culture and place. These challenges hit me really hard some days. During these days, I stared to focus on every positive aspect of my life here, and that together with long phone calls to my family and friends back home helped me get through those days.<\/p>\n

During my projects, I volunteered especially with the incoming volunteers. I answered their questions, took part in selecting the new ESC volunteers, and helped the volunteers during the pre-departure time: bought them flights, helped with the residence permit process and did agreements. I also take part in some events in which I told to people about volunteering experience.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, there wasn\u2019t enough time to create a bigger personal project, but I was able to do a small one, the \u201cItalian Night\u201d for celebrating the 25th of April, a National Holiday in Italy. During this small event, I told about the resistance war that took place in my country during the last years of the Second World War, and I taught how to make gnocchi for then eating them all together.<\/p>\n

Nicole Bresolin<\/em><\/p>\n

Nicole travelled for European Solidarity Corps volunteering at Maailmanvaihto \u2013 ICYE Finland with Associazione Joint (<\/i>https:\/\/associazionejoint.org<\/a><\/i>) as the sending supporting organisation in Italy.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi, I\u2019m Nicole from north-east Italy and I volunteer at Maailmanvihto\u2019s office for the first half of 2025. In October 2024 I completed my Bachelor degree, but I felt so lost after that with no idea of what I would like to do after. For this reasons after my graduation I started to look for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":36457,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[269],"class_list":["post-36452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-story","tag-european-solidarity-corps-experiences"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nGnocchi, Growth, and New Beginnings \u2013 My Volunteering Experience | Maailmanvaihto ry<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/maailmanvaihto.fi\/en\/gnocchi-growth-and-new-beginnings-my-volunteering-experience\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Gnocchi, Growth, and New Beginnings \u2013 My Volunteering Experience | Maailmanvaihto ry\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Hi, I\u2019m Nicole from north-east Italy and I volunteer at Maailmanvihto\u2019s office for the first half of 2025. 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