Hello! Hola!
My name is Blanca, I’m 23 years old, and I’m from Vigo a small city in the region of Galicia, in the northwest of Spain. I studied Social Work, from 2013 till 2017, at the University of Vigo, and in my third year, I went to study to Slovenia through an Erasmus+ Program. It was an amazing experience to find out their concept of social work, and also because I got the chance to work as a volunteer in two different projects. The first one was with refugee people, in a temporary refugee camp between the border of Slovenia and Croatia and the second one was in a day center for children.
After finishing my degree, I went to Madrid for a year to study a Master of International Cooperation at the Complutense University of Madrid. This was a great opportunity to live in the capital city of my country and I also got to learn a lot of the sector of cooperation and development. At some point I realized that I need more experience in the field, especially when I was writing my thesis. The final thesis of my bachelor’s degree was about the nowadays situation of refugee people in Europe while the thesis of my master’s degree was focused on the situation of Syrian refugee women and how their strengths and also their needs are not taking into account.
All this research led me to search for a Volunteering Project related to refugees. Finally, I found the perfect one. It was in the Volonterski centar of Osijek (Croatia), and there I found the perfect mix between community development, but also the opportunity to work with refugees again. This experience will last for eight months, so I’m looking forward to being able to share knowledge and learn a lot from them and the work that they are doing here.