{"id":1367,"date":"2024-04-01T23:23:28","date_gmt":"2024-04-02T04:23:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/editingwp.icyecolombia.com\/en\/?p=1367"},"modified":"2024-04-01T23:25:49","modified_gmt":"2024-04-02T04:25:49","slug":"auto-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/editingwp.icyecolombia.com\/en\/2024\/04\/01\/auto-draft\/","title":{"rendered":"Why international volunteering can change your life? part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Catalina Mar\u00edn<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

CEO of Icye Colombia and volunteer in Hungary (2012-2013), United Kingdom (2009-2010).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was recently wondering how my life had changed since I first heard the word “volunteering”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remember I was still in high school and was told that performing “social service” was a requirement for my degree. I opted to give a few hours at the emblematic Virgilio Barco Library in the city of Bogota. At the time I didn’t really understand why or what I was going to use that time for, instead of dedicating it to other more important things like basketball, friends and family outings. I just thought that at least it was going to be an excellent opportunity to read a lot of books during those vacations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vacations went by and by the time I realized it, those 80 hours of social service were coming to an end. I had already become familiar with a place I didn’t know, I had become fond of the endless aisles of books, I had classified and ordered hundreds of volumes, I had made a couple of friends (the most endearing was Pity, whom I always remember with infinite affection and of whom I still have a tiny little caiman for my hair and who later would be connected to the world of music and other endearing characters that came into my life), but above all, I had remained in SILENCE most of my time there (obviously because it was a library). I had the chance to think a lot about what I was going to do for the rest of my life – ha ha ha, the truth is that volunteering takes you to unexpected places -, and it helped me prepare for those last few months before graduating from high school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There a new world opened up for me where I understood that volunteering had brought a lot of new things to my life that “out of obligation” became a delight for that time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I went back to school from vacation with a lot of experiences and years later, my unconscious -although I think it was more conscious than I want to think-, looked for a way to leave the country through the volunteer program. I came to Icye Colombia in 2004. Thus, I embarked at 19 years old on a plane with a backpack and a thousand illusions towards a social project in the city of Loughborough (United Kingdom).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In PART TWO of this blog, I will tell you how that experience was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Catalina Mar\u00edn CEO of Icye Colombia and volunteer in Hungary (2012-2013), United Kingdom (2009-2010). I was recently wondering how my life had changed since I first heard the word “volunteering”. I remember I was still in high school and was told that performing “social service” was a requirement for my degree. I opted to give […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/editingwp.icyecolombia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/blog-cata.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/editingwp.icyecolombia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/editingwp.icyecolombia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/editingwp.icyecolombia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/editingwp.icyecolombia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/editingwp.icyecolombia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1367"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/editingwp.icyecolombia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1371,"href":"https:\/\/editingwp.icyecolombia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367\/revisions\/1371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/editingwp.icyecolombia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/editingwp.icyecolombia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/editingwp.icyecolombia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/editingwp.icyecolombia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}