Volunteering is usually framed as an act of giving. What gets talked about less is how much volunteers themselves walk away with. Whether it's a few hours of community service or months spent in a foreign country, the experience has a way of changing people on both sides of it. These are some of the moments that have stayed with me during my time as an ESC volunteer in Rzeszów, Poland, with INPRO.
One of the projects I've been most involved in here is running workshops for young people, covering everything from cultural exchange to personal development. One session focused on storytelling, specifically on how our own experiences can be used to inspire others. We worked with teenagers from different backgrounds, many of whom were reluctant to share anything personal at first. But something shifted as the weeks went on. One participant, quiet and reserved from the start, shared something deeply personal about a difficult period in her family. That moment of honesty opened something up in the room. Others started sharing too. By the end of the workshop, these were not the same young people who had walked in unsure of themselves. They had discovered that their stories had weight, and that being heard can be its own kind of transformation.
Another moment that has stayed with me happened during one of our Open Café evenings, where people from different cultures come together to discuss topics in a relaxed, open setting. A young refugee attended for the first time, having just arrived in Poland, barely speaking Polish or English, visibly on edge. I watched him over the course of the evening, slowly start to lean in. By the end of the night he was smiling, laughing, joining in. One evening didn't change his situation, but it gave him something real: a room where he felt safe and accepted. Sometimes that's exactly where things begin.
Cultural exchange events have brought their own unexpected moments too. After one presentation about Armenia, a young girl came up to me and told me she had never heard of the country before. That stopped me. How many people in the world simply don't know each other exist, not out of indifference, but just because nobody ever told them? From that point on I made it a personal goal to bring more of those underrepresented stories into our events. Awareness like that spreads quietly, but it spreads.
And then there's what this experience has done to me. I arrived in Poland eager but uncertain. Over these months I've picked up skills I didn't have before, in photography, event organisation, workshop facilitation, but more than that I've learned things about myself that I couldn't have learned any other way. Resilience. Patience. What it actually feels like to step outside your comfort zone and stay there long enough to grow.
The real power of volunteering doesn't always show up in the big visible moments. Most of it lives in the small, everyday ones. A student who finally speaks up. A stranger who starts to feel like he belongs. A girl who goes home knowing that Armenia exists.
Those moments are enough.
Mariam - A volunteer from Armenia