Longterm volunteer

Volunteering abroad is a journey full of new experiences, emotions and discoveries. Many meaningful moments happen quickly, and reflection helps you slow down and make sense of them. Through reflection, learning becomes visible: you see how you are growing, what you are learning about yourself and others, and how your experience is shaping your choices, skills, values, and sense of solidarity.

In the European Solidarity Corps, learning is non-formal - there are no grades or tests, and reflection here is not an assessment tool. It is a process that helps you notice important aspects about yourself and others - to help you understand your motivations, your reactions, your challenges, your competences and your contribution to the project.

This guide supports you throughout the volunteering journey. For each phase, it offers the most relevant reflection questions and suggests a method that can help you explore that moment of your experience. Because you may be using different methods at different times, we recommend keeping one notebook or one digital folder (on your phone or computer) where all your reflections are collected. Seeing your thoughts, drawings, logs or recordings in one place will help you recognise changes and learning over time.

As you move through your project, your needs will change. Some days you may want structure, other days creativity; sometimes you may need to process emotions, and other times you may want to understand your contribution or your role in the community. This guide offers different pathways so you can choose what supports you best in each moment. To help you choose the right method when you need it, the guide follows the natural stages of the ESC journey. You can use the following steps to decide what fits best at any given moment.

How to decide which method to use

Method	When	What you need	Who you need
Vision board
My learning style