Starting my ESC volunteering at SCI France: a full immersion in the Organization’s values and in French culture

My ESC Experience

With this article I would like to present myself to the SCI community, its partners and all the readers of this E-zine, and shortly describe my first week as a volunteer at SCI France.

I am Alessandra, from Italy, I am 29, and I have an academic background in Cultural Studies, Communication and African Studies. I have decided to take part in the ESC program as I am deeply committed to social justice and environmental sustainability. Moreover, I have previously volunteered, in 2022, as an intern in Tanzania, dealing with fundraising and project design, with a local NGO focusing on Heritage Conservation. Further, I have also volunteered as a civil servant in Uganda, under an international mobility program run by the Italian Government. In Uganda, between June 2024 and June 2025, I worked with an international NGO, supporting the management of three Vocational Education projects addressed to marginalized youths. These two past volunteering experiences have been transformational on a personal level and fundamental to develop professional skills. Volunteering has allowed me to get to know other cultures, gain new insights and different perspectives on reality, it has made me humble and highly flexible, and it has allowed me to practice values such as solidarity, interculturality, inclusion and non-violence.

I have been based in Denmark since 2018, where I carried out my studies and where I have been working within the hospitality sector, as a waitress, babysitter and cleaning helper. In 2025, after coming back to Copenhagen from my Civil Service year in Uganda, I started working again within the restaurant sector. However, my everyday life was missing a deeper meaning, and I had almost no time and occasion to practice my interests and my values. Therefore, I decided to start applying for a new Volunteering experience, this time under the European Solidarity Corps program, as jobs within the NGO and Humanitarian sector proved to be highly inaccessible for my personal experience.

I chose SCI as a host organization for its focus on non-violence, social justice and sustainability, and I selected France as a hosting country because I wanted to learn a new language that could be useful for a future job search. Therefore, I submitted an application, and after an initial interview with a staff member, I got offered the opportunity to work as an ESC volunteer on the project “SUMUD YOU: Building Euro-Mediterranean Water and Land Resilience from a Youth Grassroots Perspective”.

I accepted with no hesitation, due to my deep interest in regenerative agriculture, and in particular in agroforestry and permaculture. Further, I was also motivated by the fact that the project involves continuous collaboration and knowledge exchanges with youth environmental activists, as I have previously been involved in grassroot activist groups in Copenhagen. I was also driven by the international reach of the project as it is designed and implemented by a consortium of five organizations in France, Italy, Spain, Tunisia, Jordan and Palestine. And finally, I admire the fact that the project does not turn a blind eye on the genocide and ecocide in course in Palestine, but rather contributes to document the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, focusing on its environmental dimension in terms of water and land scarcity.

Therefore, within the contest of the SUMUD YOU project, I will contribute to mapping land and water conservation initiatives within the north-east of France, supporting the connections between youth activist groups involved in water and land resilience initiatives, take part in study visits within France and abroad, participate in dissemination workshops, and update project documentation. In addition, I will also take part in, and help with the logistics of diverse local activities carried out by SCI France in Lille, such as training sessions and solidarity events.

I am now writing this article in Lille, where I have just concluded my first week as a volunteer at SCI France. One of the first activities I took part in, to start breaking the ice and fully immerse myself in French culture, was the training for the long-term French Civique Service volunteers. The training ran from the 15th to the 18th of September 2026 and was attended by seven volunteers aged 21 to 24. The training was held by Elie Dupin, the Coordinator for international mobility programs at SCI France through an interactive and informal methodology. The sessions included themes such as: the history and mission of SCI, the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) tool, the youth motivations for volunteering, the deconstruction of Eurocentrism, Conflict Transformation, and Interculturality, among others.

During one of the coffee breaks at the training, I was chatting with two of the volunteers, Anto and Audrey, both 24 years old, and directed respectively to Italy and Morocco for their volunteering. I asked them about their favourite part of the training, and they both prioritised the methodology itself, the presence of interactive exercises and games, the informal tone and relaxed atmosphere, in contrast with the formal education setting they were used to. What I also noticed, in spite of my very poor French language skills, and appreciated, was the fact that the SCI training encouraged the volunteers to develop a critical understanding of international solidarity and volunteering. Indeed, the facilitator did not treat the volunteers as passive, empty containers to fill up with knowledge, like traditional education methodologies would have done. Volunteers were rather pushed to question knowledge, rather than to simply absorb it and adapt to it, cultivating a critical consciousness that will be fundamental for their future volunteering experiences abroad. I’m now looking forward to start working at the SUMUD YOU project, taking part in the National On-Arrival Training for ESC volunteers in France at the end of September in Calais, and continuing to contribute to this E-Zine in the next months.