My name is Ernestine, I am 21 years old and I come from France. I participated with my partner in a 6-month European Solidarity Corps volunteer mission from September 2023 to March 2024 in Italy with the organization Progetto Gaia Terra.

I decided to join the program because I was taking a gap year after studying sociology for 3 years at university to reflect on what I wanted to do next and this project seemed like the perfect fit.

Gaia Terra is a community, in the form of an eco-village, that promotes sustainability. The community is made up of 6 permanent people and around 20 other volunteers who come and go from all over the world and of all ages, who stop for a few days, weeks or months.

Our tasks were very varied and mainly consisted of participating in the daily life of the community. We were able to try different activities to see what we liked best: gardening, cooking, helping host events, eco-building

 

creation of self-produced products (sunflower oil, fermented foods and drinks, soaps), cleaning, communication on social media… with the idea, in the end, of taking responsibility in one of these areas.

 

I was part of the kitchen team and the communications team, with some other responsibilities such as preparing kefir or watering the plants. My main missions were therefore to help cook for everyone and take care of social media content; I also enjoyed gardening and helping on our neighbors' farms.

Many of Gaia Terra's activities are oriented towards well-being practices and communication techniques to manage and prevent conflicts. Every week we hosted different events on many topics and practices such as yoga, dance or permaculture, in which we sometimes took part.

Additionally, we participated in clubs every week: twice a week for organization and once a week for communication practices. The latter aims to practice different communication techniques all together to dissolve potential tensions or simply to express ourselves and strengthen the bonds between us. We learned techniques such as nonviolent communication, emotional circles, 5 to 5 and many others.

The structure of the community and its organization into circles was itself very interesting to me and I want to continue practicing and developing these communication tools.
Living in a community was very challenging and this new way of living took me some time to adjust. After a few weeks, however, I felt completely at home among the other volunteers and made many friends. This community has truly become a family.

I was lucky enough to be able to live this experience with my partner, which helped me a lot to overcome all the difficulties that arose.

The balance between work and free time was also a difficulty for me, since its management depended on us. To help me in this regard I decided (with the advice of others) to have a fixed day off each week that would allow me to take enough time to rest.
Furthermore, I learned to live with many people, all the time, some I knew, some who were strangers.

I am a rather shy person and in this context I have overcome much of my shyness. While I continued to spend time alone, I found myself being social and participating in group activities much more than I thought I would. The environment that encouraged self-reflection and self-expression helped me think about my future and make the decision to go back to school to learn graphic design.

Overall, it taught me a lot about myself and showed me another way of living with others and respecting the planet.
This experience allowed me to completely leave my comfort zone and try things I had never thought of before, confronting myself with a totally new way of living and seeing life. I have made wonderful memories and found meaningful friendships.