Over the last two months, I have had the opportunity to embark myself on a fascinating journey and, taking advantage of my groupmates’ wise guide and advice, to discover the challenges and penuries that novice volunteers will encounter in their own journey. In this final blog, I will re-visit my previous contributions to our hands-on communication blog project, “A Better Volunteer”, and try to show my conclusions and reflections upon a topic of paramount importance for the humanitarian sector.
I always remember this Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece while having to deal with an unpleasant situation from which I would rather stay away. His dolly zoom effect replicates perfectly the uncomfortable sensation that you experience when your stomach flinches and the subsequent spinning of the head begins.
Marta was about to finish her studies in medicine when she, along with a bundle of fellow doctors-to-be, decided to spend her summer holidays in the Philippines. Blue-eyed and blonde, short and fragile, she is my little niece and the apple of my eye. But she is also self-assured and far stronger than the initial impression that her fragile appearance conveys… And when she felt the spur-of-the-moment drive for joining a humanitarian cause, for living the volunteering experience, and finally, for enjoying two additional weeks in the paradisiacal archipelago, no one in the world was capable of stopping her from crossing the planet. Once back home, she brought her baggage full of countless emotive stories, joy and tears, gratitude from and towards the Filipino people, a worrying sunburn, and hundreds of digital pictures already posted on Facebook and Instagram.
