I’m Anna and I participated in the project “I’m Sport Volunteer” in Bologna. The one-month long project was a great experience. Various sport activities were organized: team sports like volleyball and basketball; individual sports like swimming and badminton; as well as less known sports like pilates, capoeira and Molkky. Italian and Turkish volunteers engaged all together daily in each activity.  

Because I’m not a sporty person and I’m not used to train every day, the project was an opportunity for me to challenge myself and overcome my limits. Furthermore, I had the opportunity to discover a new culture – the Turkish culture – which I didn’t know much before and to create a powerful bond with the other volunteers through sport activities. 

The most exciting part of the project for me was sharing such experience with people coming from different countries. As a matter of fact, I believe that each volunteer, with her/his cultural background and experience, brought an added value to the project and created a stimulating environment in which we could not only play different kinds of sport and have a lot of fun while playing, but also in which we could share personal experiences, ideas and opinions and discuss about them together. 

To conclude, I believe that this experience contributed a lot to my personal development: at times very stimulating and fun, other times also hard (waking up early to play sport was never my passion and playing sport in such a hot weather was sometimes very difficult), it taught me something more about myself, about Turkish culture and of course about sport.