EVS for me meant to face and win many personal challenges. Before of this experience, for example, I have never used the washing machine and never cooked for many people. But the Challenge I was happy the most to win was with no doubt my relationship with children. I’ve
never been a big fan of the children, I kept distance, and sometimes I was even scared. Now I can absolutely say that the mental “barrier” that kept us at a distance is gone, and this happened thanks to O.A.ZA. and theGreen Fingers project, which allowed me, in particular, to teach some Italian to a class of children. I understood that the lesson was a success when the week later the children greeted me smiling and calling me by my name. I think this one was the moment in which the most I felt satisfied with what I had done and what I was doing. Now I think I learnt what was the secret of this success: Enthusiasm and the attention I paid to them.

Furthermore, EVS for me meant even more. In particular, it gave me the possibility to express myself in different ways rather than I used to do it, so it could make me discover other points of view of my personality and skills. Thanks to the different workshop with children, in fact, I could express my creativity and fantasy, an aspect of me which had always been sleeping and that I never used in school or work, because EVS means even and mainly to learn in a non-conventional way. And if you want to learn, you change. If you change, you learn.