Hello, my name is Jenny and I have decided to spend a year in Belfast. I have just finished school in Germany and I have decided to take a wee break before going to university. I am taking part in the EVS programme which I am very grateful for as I have been waiting for the possibility to spend a year abroad for very long. I am volunteering at Headliners, a youth media agency based in Belfast city centre and I am quite happy with my placement so far. My supervisor Ciaran has given me the chance to work on my own project. As I wanted to get to know something about Belfast’s vibrant music scene I have arranged an interview with a local band called ‘More Than Conquerors’ which was a lot of fun. What I appreciate most about my placement is that my personal interests are taken into account and are considered to be important. I have been here for two months now and I have the feeling that I there are still many exciting things waiting for me.

My name is Maria Sødal Vole, and I'm an EVS volunteer from Norway. I'm spending my gap year volunteering in Belfast.My volunteer project is Headliners, a children's charity which aims to give children and young people a voice through the media. Our members come in twice a week, and we work on various projects with them. In addition to this we have workshops and talks with them, work on projects. Headliners gives the young people a chance to learn a lot about journalism, news reporting, photography and filmmaking, and have fun while they do it.

As a Headliners volunteer I get to work a lot with the members, which is a lot of fun. In addition to the youth work, I always have my own little projects that I'm working on. Sometimes I'll be writing articles and designing the layout of a magazine, and other times I'll be making short films. I'm lucky enough to get to try out a lot of different things while I'm at Headliners. I've only been here four months, but already I've learned so much. I didn't have any experience with journalism before I came here, but now I feel much more confident in my ability to write, and I might actually study journalism when my year of volunteering is finished.

I feel so lucky to have gotten the opportunity to be a volunteer for a year. It's such an amazing experience, and I'm so happy that I've  gotten the chance to meet people from all over the world. All I can say is, so far this experience has been incredible, and I'm so excited for the coming eight months!

I’m Silvia and I’m from Sweden. I volunteered for Headliners (former Children’s Express) during my EVS-year (which lasted from August 2006 – September 2007). I learnt and developed a lot during the year and this experience made me grow significantly as a person.

Headliners is a place for young people to come and learn about TV, print, photo, radio and other media-related activities. I started an in-house newsletter, facilitated radio training and conducted conflict resolution workshops during my year. I also got involved in the bureau’s other activities such as TV, photo and creative writing training so I learnt a lot as well.

However, as I always say, EVS is about so much more than just volunteering; I went on trips with my wonderful flatmates, the trainings and get-togethers were great fun and the parties were always memorable.

EVS-life is full of colours and different shades of pink (my favourite colour), and living it was like a dream.

Silvia Lim

Amarinsk's Story

Due to my EVS experience at Headliners I have decided that in the future I'd like to work with young people again. I guess that I've realised that I am actually quite good with young people and with art as one of my passions and English as the language I like most (that, I had decided long before I went to Belfast) I think I've made the right decision during and after EVS. Because not everyone is as sure of what to do after EVS, I've decided to write a small book about the options as one of the last running future capital projects.

Amarinsk Abels 

Hello, my name is Stella Balmaverde, I’m 24 years old and I’m from Italy. At the moment I’m doing the European Volunteering Service in Belfast, Northern Ireland, but there is something more to say about the reason that brought me here. When I was 17 years old I understood what I wanted to do in my own life. I figured out it staying one month in Paulo Afonso, a town in the North East of Brazil, 10hs from Salvador de Bahia. There I worked as a volunteer with some street children (meninos de rua) who were living in the poor and decadent favela of Paulo Afonso. These guys taught me so much, smiling and enjoying their lives, even if more than simple and hopeless, that I couldn’t live in the same way of before. I started to be interested in social work, education, global empowerment and equality and actually also my academic path had been on this topic. I did and I enjoyed all the possible programmes organized by the European Union, because I think that we – young people – have to take advantage of this kind of possibilities that not everybody in the world has, not at all. Through these experiences you can learn new languages, meet other cultures, challenge yourself with people that own different backgrounds and visions of the life, make new important friends.I think that choose to do the EVS or other kind of juvenile mobility programmes is not just choosing to do some months abroad to be brave and independent, but it’s also a choice of life and of values. And in my opinion everybody should join this occasion to do something good with the people around us, in all ours daily lives. I will never thank enough who enabled me to be part of it.

Stella Balmaverde