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Just a jot of history...the story of the first Dynamo International volunteer

It’ll soon be eight years ago that I spent an entire year at Dynamo International doing the European Voluntary Service (EVS). It was at the very beginning of this NGO, in 2002, and at the time it was called Dynamonde.

I arrived on 13 September 2001 and in December, I settled into the Rue de l’Etoile (the organization’s current premises), and was therefore the first volunteer to live there! It was also the first time that I’d lived in such a beautiful and spacious house! I really lived “two lives” there. Let me explain: just a short time after I arrived, the first offices appeared (those of Edwin, Monette, mine, etc). At the same time, computers, the internet, the phone which rang from first thing in the morning, also appeared…and very quickly the meetings multiplied. So during the day, this beautiful house was the home of Dynamonde, where I worked. But in the evening and at weekends, this house was also my home, where my friends and acquaintances dropped by to say hello, to come and eat, etc. We even had birthday celebrations there, and I still see people from that time.

Doing my EVS at Dynamo International proved to be a very enriching experience from a professional point of view. Firstly, I was able to see the street educators of the non-profit organization Dynamo at work and to help them in their work, which for me was very good training. Then, I had the opportunity to meet many people from the area of social work in the broad sense of the term, which helped me to understand the institutional system under which street work falls, as well as some of the sociopolitical issues surrounding it.

For me it was also a real privilege to be there at the time when the International Forum “Paroles de Rue” was being prepared. It was held in Brussels in 2002 and brought together key actors in childhood and street work. Not to mention my participation in welcoming and sending volunteers by Dynamo International…what a year! In any case it was full of new experiences, meetings, discoveries, involvement…for me it really revealed a different type of freedom.

After this year, I returned to Portugal, my country of origin, but only for one month. Indeed, rich from the experience of my EVS, I left for Paris for a four month street work placement. And then, I came back… I had fallen in love with Brussels, with Belgium (and maybe even with a Belgian man?). In my subsequent professional experiences, my EVS was always an asset, not only on my CV, but also in terms of the skills, particularly linguistic skills, that I had acquired.

Today, I have the impression that I have built part of a puzzle, a piece of my life, where each experience finally falls into place and is rich in meaning. I left Portugal eight years ago, telling my parents that I was leaving for one year, and every year at the end of the holidays, I would leave again…I am still there, still here, and here, for me, began at Dynamo International. I recently returned to “my home” in Rue de l’Etoile, and saw all the changes that have taken place there, and this enabled me to become aware of my own changes and transformation…and yes, I do have a jot of history here in Belgium.

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