Equality Heroes — Around the Globe
Summer of 2019, beginning of June and Julia Gerda is on her way to Paderborn, Germany. She spent half of her summer there on a Global Volunteer project called Equality Heroes focusing on the 5th Sustainable Development Goal — Gender Equality.
In her own words, Paderborn is considered a smaller town in Germany, and even though it often reminded her of Tartu due to their pride in its university, it had its own “vibe” — lots of companies in town started with the word “Pader” taken from the town’s name which made it interesting to discover and experience that culture, first-hand.
The project itself lasted 6-weeks, starting in June and ending in July, and it was in a student initiative called Gender und Frauenprojektbereich MIA — Miteinander (MIA). It’s specifically meant for dealing with gender equality and feminism and its function is to create an environment for students in the university where they can discuss gender and feminism issues. To learn more about them and their cause, we encourage visiting their FB page or blog.
About the opportunity to work close to Paderborn University, Julia Gerda said “I really enjoyed getting to work in an environment surrounding a university, because it also meant taking part in fun activities around the school and constantly seeing like-minded peers around. It was exciting to walk around campus to experience a familiar, but unique, lifestyle in a foreign land.”
She wasn’t working that project by herself, there was a whole team of volunteers behind the work being done during the project. The team itself boasted a diverse group of individuals: there were two girls from Turkey and an Indian girl doing the project with her. The goal of the project was to set up a PR-program for MIA, which involved taking care of social media and their website, creating posters and strengthening the network with other initiatives and groups on campus.
During her project, Julia Gerda got to do different tasks and gained a lot of experience from those. On the project, the volunteers worked on MIA’s Facebook page, updated their blog, did some designs for events, attended an Intercultural Week and presented MIA there, did interviews with students and put together a video of the interviews, participated in the Paderborn Fridays for Future climate strikes, interviewed a founder of MIA that’s currently working as a professor in the university, and held events such as Clothes Exchange and Open Café.
But as always with Global Volunteer projects, it is not just about the work being done. Julia Gerda and her fellow volunteers also had a lot of fun besides work. They got to let their creativity flow and paint feminism logos on bags, strengthening the ideas they were promoting. Every day they also took small breaks to do yoga, get active and enjoy the German weather.
In the first weeks of their volunteer work, the university also held an annual Summer Festival that they got to take part in. They also got the opportunity to visit a museum at the end of the volunteer work with other volunteers from different countries who were working on a different project.
Overall, it was a fun experience that taught her a lot about working with people from different backgrounds and with unique skills. When asked if she would do this aging or recommend the experience to others, Julia Gerda said the following: ”It was humbling to be given such varied opportunities and not a day went by without us all having a laugh together; the emphasis on meeting people from different backgrounds made me feel at home. I can definitely say that if I had the chance to do it again, I would!”
This was Julia Gerda’s experience. Find out what could be yours!
