May 29, 2026
Giovanni, our volunteer from Italy, spent his 6 months of ESC mobility in our local organisation. If you want to know more about the kind of opportunity ESC volunteers can get, read through his feedback, travel and volunteering recollection :
SEPTEMBER 2025
I arrived in Łódź on the 5th of September, met my tutor Ada who took me from the airport to the dorm. I have started getting used to this new life abroad as it is my first time in Poland, and living for a long time alone in a new country.
Then I went with Ambre to the capital Warsaw for the arrival training with a lot of other volunteers who have started this new experience like me and it was really interesting and fun. I met interesting people and did interesting activities to get to know each other and to start this experience with the best mindset.
When I was back from the training I was able to properly start my tasks for Level Up starting with the English talking classrooms; after a few days I had a meeting with Ania to properly define my tasks and the workshops i’m going to do in the next months.
The next two weeks were to prepare my workshops, participate in the events, like the presentation and games for youth from Italy and Poland, more other English classrooms and the growth spot hosted by Sacha.
The overall of the start is it very nice, I’m excited to continue this project and to live abroad.
OCTOBER 2025
The most interesting part of this month was the STP (Study Poland visit for Ukrainian and Moldovan students) group and all the activities we did together. It was a new thing for me to take care of this kind of group, moving together through the city and finding nice games to play with the guys. Presenting my country to all the participants and seeing their curiosity was very nice and a new experience for me. I collected a big variety of memories that I will always keep with me.
At the end of the month I also did my first workshop built by myself and it was great working on it because the topic it’s something I really want to share with others and I hope I can share it as much as possible. I want to say that all the new things i’m doing are exciting, sometimes stressful especially because of the language but at the end i’m proud of what I am doing here.
NOVEMBER 2025
November was an interesting month for me, i did a lot of different activities, met new people and I found the time to think about what to do after this project. I started seeing the improvement in my english and I feel more secure when I talk, it’s also very funny when I meet someone who doesn’t speak english and we try everything to communicate.
In November some friends from the arrival training went to Lodz to meet me and Ambre, I really enjoyed this days of joy, going around the city and sharing the different experiences from the other volunteers, we also did friendship bracelet.
To end the month in the best way I went to Krakow for a weekend to visit the city, I went to the castle on the sunset, visited the salt mines and explored the neighbourhoods of the city. Overall this month was exciting and full of new stuff.
DECEMBER 2025
December was a busy month but also very exciting. I have taken part in a nice amount of very different activities, my favourite was helping the people for the “Training for trainers” project, I had the possibility to meet people from various countries and talk about differences and common things.
Another cool activity was the workshop about freedom of speech and amnesty international. It’s always nice to have the possibility to confront each other about a topic that influences our lives and also write letters to help people around the world. It makes me proud of what I’m doing here.
Another activity I want to remember was the conference for the volunteers in Łódź (even if it was mostly in Polish) I really enjoyed that day, I saw the joy of the people being proud of what they’re doing for the communities, being part of that is lovely, and recording the moments during the conference was a really funny activity.
Due to the stress accumulated during the month I had a moment of tension with the other volunteers… I’m not proud on how I acted and I had the time to redefine my approach to spend my time here better, A really thank to my tutor to have helped us to recover from that moment
To finish the month I flew back to my family to spend the Christmas holidays together and see my friends, sharing all the fantastic experiences I’m doing here. This december is a month i will keep in my memories for a long time.
JANUARY 2026
January has started with the NYE in Italy, a nice moment to spend the time with friends and family before coming back to Poland to finish my project.
We had some changes in the office and I’ve re-entered the “loop” of work with more time than usual to prepare the materials for the activity I follow.
A really nice project where I’m putting my effort on is the one about the Erasmus+ project LEVEL UP is planning to do in the next months, the topic was chosen from my workshop of digital detox and with Mateo we started doing a brainstorming to find the best ideas to make this happens, we also shared our ideas to our leader Ania and she was very proud of us.
In my free time I’m building new friendships and relationships, specially with a Polish and a French guy, one day we went all together to 2 art exhibitions, one was a VR interactive experience about depression in EC1 (Very cool place), the second one was an exhibition of 2 artists showing their art, it was very cool to have the possibility to talk with the artists and hear the message of their art directly from them.
To finish the month me and Ambre went to Wroclaw to meet our friends from the arrival training and visit the city, but this is a story for the next and last month. Honorable mention to Marta who helped me to try to learn Polish and we did the last lesson with her. Polish is a very difficult language for me and Marta was a very good teacher.
FEBRUARY 2026
This is the last month of the project, a good time for reflections and appreciate all the moments. I’m very proud of the english talks project because we are having a good amount of people, they are bringing friends and relatives and also they are always really engaged making it funny and interesting for them and us.
It was the last month to increase my relationship with the new people I have met during my time in Poland hopefully to continue having contacts with them. To conclude the month there was a new Youth exchanges to sharing how the young people works for youth around the city, it was very interesting see how many different organizations there are in Lodz who works with and for young people, and also the students and how the structure of the Erasmus Student Network are doing their part.
With 2 last polish dinner I will say goodbye to this time spent with level up and all the people I have met during this project.
SUMMARY
These six months of volunteering helped me to define who I want to be, create relations with people from all over Europe, with different backgrounds and stories is what I was looking for, sharing to each other our experience, problems and solutions was helpful to reach these results.
I’m really glad to have started this project and find this new reality outside of my usual bounds, It made me grow inside and outside, escaping my comfort zone was great and I don’t regret the choice I have made to be here.
Author : Giovanni Luise
This article was created as part of the Individual Volunteering project –Lead, Help, and Grow: LEVEL UP (2024-2-PL01-ESC51-VTJ-000288846) implemented by the European Solidarity Corps program with European Union funds.