Heloo!
My name is Chiara and I am an ESC volunteer as project assistant.
June is almost over, and this means one thing: half of the ESC experience has sadly gone. Time is flying (a bit too) fast; the last four weeks have been full of amazing people and activities, new exciting tasks and a lot of sun. But let’s go step by step.
At the beginning of June the ESC training happened. What is that exactly? It is a week organized by the Flemish national agency, Jint, during which all the volunteers under the ESC program in Belgium meet each other. The purposes of the training are multiple: volunteers are supposed to get to know each other, to find out more about different ESC experiences, and to gather practical information about the rights as volunteers and tips for living in Belgium. My assessment: it was a lovely week. Regardless of my initial concerns about spending 6 days together with new people and despite the moody weather, my experience in the training was more than positive.
Back to Brussels, new tasks were waiting for me at QUEST. As I mentioned, I am volunteering within the project circle of the organization. In practical terms, the circle writes, implements and monitors European-funded projects. In June, the project circle started to work on new projects to submit for the next round of applications of September/October 2026. Even though I don’t have experience in project writing, I have received the thrilling opportunity to work on it. So, this month was about ideating the project and preparing the concept note, which is a document containing the information about the project, necessary to contact later on partner organizations that could be interested in being part of the consortium. I came up with an idea about exploring the set of emotions that young people experience in relation to the rising use of Artificial Intelligence in everyday life. I feel like I have learnt a lot from these tasks and from all the support the team gave me in this new project phase. It makes me really happy.
Work aside, the last weeks of June in Brussels surprised me with a notable heatwave. The temperatures have frighteningly fluctuated between 30 and 38 degrees, and there was little possibility to escape it. I went on the hunt for ventilators, which, all of a sudden, became quite rare to find. It seemed that nobody expected the city to be this hot. In spite of the sweaty days and restless nights, I managed to enjoy the city a lot together with a friend who came to visit me. We went to museums and parks, and we also explored pretty Gent.
It is easy to imagine how much I’ll miss all of this, but I’ll save the nostalgic feelings for another day.
ciaociao,
Chiara