My amazing experience abroad

 

Hello guys, my name is Anca and I am from Romania.  In this blog I would like to share with you my experience until now in Turkey, Ankara being a volunteer at Iyaca, until now, for me personally, one of the best  organizations which I had the chance to work with. Maybe some of you will be wondering who I am and why I chose this organization? So, I will start to tell you a few things about me to get to know each other better, and then I will motivate my choices as well as my experience so far here. I am a young psychologist, 25 years old specialized in Forensic Psychology who loves to travel, to meet new people but especially to understand and to explore new traditions, cultures and the way other people from other parts of the world live their lives. I also think that having the chance to study psychology opened my eyes to understand the fact that not all of us live the same, not all of us think the same, but especially not all of us have a chance for a normal life. After all, what does a normal life mean? This answer can be so different from person to person, but for me it means especially that a person's basic needs are fully met (food, living conditions, tomorrow's safety). But every human being on this earth met these needs, so important for survival? Unfortunately, reality is not often the way we see it in movies or the way many of us live it. Outside of our reality there are children and people who don’t have even anything to eat on certain days, not to mention satisfactory living conditions or other factors so important for a healthy life. This is one of the reasons I am here with this program. Iyaca offered me the chance as a volunteer to be close to refugees (from different parts of the world, they came in Turkey, hoping in this way that they will have another chance for life, most of them came from areas like Syria, Iraq, where it is currently extremely difficult to live). Together with the volunteers from the organization, we managed every week to bring a little smile on some adults or children’s faces by preparing food packages and distributing them to those in need. Those moments when I am close to those souls are incredible and offer me an indescribable gratitude, as a human being. Helping, getting involved and knowing that this world needs our help a lot, makes us every day a little more "humans", gives us a real perspective of the life and gives us the opportunity to be with those which are facing unfavorable life situations. 

The organization also gave me the opportunity as a young person to learn about how this whole system funded  by EU works, what are the benefits and how can I get involved to achieve or contribute to such projects, created to improve the quality of life and  the progress of the environment in which we live. Iyaca gave me the opportunity to meet wonderful, open, funny people but also extremely professional and dedicated to their work, and this only makes me feel extremely lucky to have the chance to be part of this team, knowing that every day it gives me the opportunity to help my fellows, to form me as a young woman, but especially as a human. I hope you guys enjoyed my article, and until the next blog I just have a short advice: "Follow your dreams, be kind and be brave enough to be yourself all the time!"