February 2, 2026
I joined LEVEL UP for 9 months as a volunteer with the European Solidarity Corps. Here is a monthly journal of the things I did abroad with my organisation and of my time in Poland.
APRIL
My first weeks in Lodz were generally really good, it’s been great to be in Poland again while enjoying the excitement of discovering a completely new city.
Between walking around the city, visiting its famous locations, bars, cafes, restaurants, amazing parks and libraries, and getting to know the other volunteers, their friends and the people from LEVEL UP, I haven’t had time to get bored.
One of the most memorable moments of this month has been the integration week in Warsaw, where we mingled with other ESC volunteers in Poland.
On the volunteering side, this month was busy with the preparation and planning of a few projects. We had to do most of the filming for our French vlog, a video that will be posted on Youtube in which the French volunteers take viewers around different interesting spots in town. It was the occasion to try some cafés, visit the cinema museum and new places. I started working on H.E.R. talk event, the online conference I’m organising for June about women’s rights. This month was also rich in school presentations, as we did a lot of them.
MAY
In May I worked on preparing a few projects. I created a list of volunteering opportunities and platforms for the Kompass project, which targets people looking for volunteering opportunities and wonder what type/length/location would be best for them, where to find them or who might need help preparing for interviews.
I also spent time working on my own project H.E.R. Talk ( History, Equality, Rights ). This online event will be a talk conducted by two speakers who both have experience with women’s rights and activism ; and myself. I am looking forward to this event and will work on building a part focused on global and European women’s rights notions, how limited those legal provisions might be and why activism will always be needed and the wins we can have when people take action.
With the other volunteers, we helped on a few events this month. We dealt with the promotional aspect of our events and went to a school for Europe day where we did a presentation about our countries and volunteering. And last but not least, we organised a “French day” where we planned a big presentation and quiz game about France ; did a table game and I cooked for the event and made traditional French crepes, we also bought typical viennoiseries.
JUNE
At the beginning of June, I got to do my online event which went really well. The two speakers, Marta from Poland and Erica from Portugal, gave great insight into the subjects of the current state of women’s rights in the EU, the fight for abortion and inclusion. Language wise, I kept attending the Polish and Japanese classes and conducted some of the French lessons.
On the weekends, we’ve had one school fair where the other volunteers and I got to chat with some really nice parents, promote our organisation and play games with the kids. It’s always amazing to see how well they actually understand English, even in primary school. We also attended a local event in LCP where a lot of other organisations also joined ; and Marta and I spent a Sunday helping out with the logistic aspect of the Discover EU training in the office.
When it comes to my online work this month I’ve been doing some research to find examples of good practices in organisations for Level Up’s brochure on transparency in the 3rd sector. I also created regulations for a competition that will take place in a few months where different Polish organisations will present and promote their own transparency practices after entering the contest. And I also completed the last step of the French team’s work for the French vlogs : adding the french subtitles for all the videos and translating these materials to english.
Other than that, I finally got to travel to Zakopane for the first time and can tick the incredible Morskie Oko hike off my bucket list.
JULY
The month of July didn’t really go as planned, since I had to travel home at the beginning of the month for family reasons and ended up staying there for about two weeks. However it was a good way to catch up on the publication of the blog articles from neuronwriter to wordpress and gave it me time to make lists of ideas for my own articles and start some first drafts.
Once back in Lodz, it was time to resume the French lessons, as we had the last two classes. After all that it was time to plan everything for the mobility with Italians, as I was a coordination helper on this project. The mobility itself went really well. We had a group of about 25 people total, the participants were young Italians on the autism spectrum. The program of the week was led by Anastazja, the organisation’s coach and psychologist who was amazing at adapting her plans and knowledge and finding the right activities for this group. This will definitely be one of my most fulfilling memories of this volunteering.
AUGUST
After coming back from the mobility project, this month started with two presentations at Level Up and I got to talk about the ESC program, our work and the butterfly effect of the volunteer experience. I’m really happy to see my public speaking skills have been developing further and I do feel like I am now a good and confident speaker.
I have also started to write my own articles for the blog and have published 3 of my articles this month : one about Working Holiday Visas, one about my favorite places in the city and a two-part article about the museum offer in Lodz. Which is why I also spent more time this month visiting all the museums I hadn’t seen before. This was the perfect task for me and I was really pleasantly surprised by the city’s focus on culture.
The month ended with our mid-project training, similar to the on-arrival training but this time in Toruń. It was my first time in this city and we had more time to explore. The new people I met were amazing, we quickly connected and exchanged so much about our volunteering journey.
SEPTEMBER
In September, two new volunteers joined the team, which means I got to show them what we do at the office and during our events and activities. As we resumed the English Talk once a week, I got to prepare some of the materials.
Our International Team also started a new series of weekly workshops called The Growth Spot, where each of us get to create, prepare and conduct their own project. As I was the first person to try that concept, I chose to create a workshop inspired by my volunteering with Amnesty International and teach people how to write appeal letters and emails to advocate for human rights. So I worked on getting everything ready : presentation, cases, materials, model letters…
When it comes to my personal life, this month was very social and I also got to travel to Katowice to meet some friends from the mid-term training so we could take part in the last Pride March of the year.
OCTOBER
October was by far one of the busiest months for me here at Level Up. It started with my workshop Advocating Through Writing. I really felt like the presentation and knowledge of the cases were a strong point, it felt natural and easy to explain the guidelines and I got good feedback for my work. I was glad to be able to send letters that we all wrote, and I was asked to do this workshop again for the study visit group.
The most intense part of the month was the STP project. We had a group of students from Ukraine and Moldova coming for almost two weeks and our role as volunteers was to coordinate their days and be around. I spent a lot of time with them, taking the group around the city , attending workshops and visits and preparing activities, overseeing their schedules and travels and, of course, making my workshop for them. The days were really full-on but we got to meet a lot of nice, inspiring and smart young people who were experiencing traveling and learning in a different way, and that was an amazing thing to see.
NOVEMBER & DECEMBER
The other volunteers and I took part in the end-of-year events. We prepared the Gala for Volunteers where most of the city’s NGOs gathered ; the Get the Net conference and Christmas celebration event. We worked on our last workshops and English Talks, but the attendance was very limited as we got close to the holidays and the weather wasn’t always the best. I continued writing articles and publishing the team’s pieces on the blog. We had been writing more content about the city.
In November, we also assisted Monika in her preparation meeting for the December training course taking place in the countryside. We also got to participate for a day during the training and help out by creating team building activities for the participants, who had come from many different countries to Poland to learn about different trainers’ techniques.
But one of my favorite events of this year took place in December and was centered around Human Rights and letter writing with Amnesty International. We got to organise everything at the Level up office – workshops on the freedom of speech and the rights of disabled people and, of course, the letter writing station where people could come and select cases to write appeal letters for. We even made it to the news and were interviewed by TV Polska!
All in all, the end of my project was busy but also very fun as I got to use the rest of my days off to travel and spend time with friends before leaving. I was able to go back to Wroclaw, where I used to study, visit Krakow again and Lublin for the very first time.
To sum up my 9 months adventure here, the first thing that I feel grateful for is the people that I’ve met at LEVEL UP and in my personal life. I felt supported and valued my hosting organisation and becoming friends with people felt very easy and genuine.
I am also particularly glad that we were encouraged to implement our projects when it comes to workshops and events. It was important to me to be in an organisation where everyone could bring something to the table. And also get something for themselves : aside from the friendships, I gained knowledge in publishing, editing and SEO ; became a way more confident public speaker and found sense and purpose in landing a hand to other volunteers around me. The organisation and I have even decided that we would be continuing our collaboration : I will remain in the International Masters team and will focus on the blog.
Last year was the first time in my life I heard about the ESC programme, and I’m definitely glad I gave it a go!
This article was created as part of the Individual Volunteering project – LEVEL UP with volunteering (2023-2-PL01-ESC51-VTJ-000173505) implemented by the European Solidarity Corps program with European Union funds.
Author : Sacha Lefèvre