By the end of this month, I will be volunteering in IFM-SEI for four months. And although I have chosen a "curious" year to go to another country and live this experience, I couldn't be happier about it. So far, I haven't travel anywhere, of course, but I feel that I have been in every part of the world and that I have already met many cultures through the screen; I have "been" in Latin America, where they have explained to me how the pandemic has worsened their quality of life, the difficulties that organizations have to do something online and what they are doing to overcome them; in Africa, where various projects are being carried out to guarantee health material to people without resources; in Europe, where organizations have had to readapt their activities online...And through projects like "Society is ours" (European Falcon Network), Building Bridges, Resist! or the Feminist Network, among others, I have been able to discuss with young educators from all over the world topics such as peace, intersectionality, the importance of voluntarism, climate change, children rights...and this has opened a sea of ideas and learning that I could only have obtained by practising internationalism. And...who says that practising non-formal education online is not possible? I can vouch for that!

Although I have been in my esplai for four years it has not been until I have come to the IFM-SEI and heard the experiences of all these people and their passion, that I have not been fully aware of how valuable we, the leisure educators, are and how difficult and grateful the life of the volunteer is. Often, as you grow up and the responsibilities multiply, the concept of what you consider useful and useless changes and, as the day only has 24 hours, you stop doing things that you think are a waste of time because they are "useless ". The thing is that, and some of us have been experiencing that, we feel bad if one day "we have not done anything useful" (that is, if we have spent the day reading, listening to music or just dedicating time to yourself....). And we end up with anxiety, anguish, stress...

This is heavy! This constant need to control time and use it to do things that, perhaps not you, but society considers useful, is what has led many people to a worrying level of stress and anguish. Sometimes, like a book, a song or a flower, things are only made for being beautiful. And that's enough. Now, more than ever, we have to do things that make us feel good and not put more stress on ourselves than we already have because of the circumstances.

And a little bit of that is being a volunteer and an educator. A way of living that many people consider useless because it is not quantifiable the value that is extracted, but that makes you feel full and, why not, useful. And it is not that the volunteer is generous above all, no. Actually, we also do it out of selfishness, because what that gives us is much more than what we give.