Ongoing (daily, weekly or monthly)

As the weeks unfold, your volunteering experience becomes a mix of routines, new opportunities and challenges. This part of reflection invites you to pay close attention to what is happening in your everyday life here. Noticing small things - how you react to situations, what energises you, what challenges you, and what you are learning from others - is an important skill to develop. Reflection during this phase is about training your ability to observe daily experiences and recognise the learning that is inside these ordinary moments.

Use the guiding questions below to capture daily learning moments. They are here to help you pause daily or weekly and observe what is shifting within you and around you.

• What’s one situation that stretched me? How did I respond?
• What gave me energy today/this week?
• What am I sharing with my friends in my home country? What does it say what’s important to me?
• How do I handle misunderstandings? What did I find difficult, and how did I handle it?
• What have I learned from someone different than me this week?
• How am I dealing with challenges of difference in customs and behaviors?
• What skill or quality have I developed recently?
• What’s something I’ve contributed that I feel proud of?
• What did I practice or improve this week/month?
• What’s one thing I’d do differently next time?

You may answer these questions in your own way, noting them down in your preferred way. If you want to explore it more deeply, you can choose one of the reflection methods below:

Ask yourself “What do I need right now?” and choose a method if you want to explore deeper:

Purpose	Method	You will need:
To understand my energy and balance	Energy Tracker	or
To learn from misunderstandings or challenges	Epic Fail Awards	or or
To notice intercultural moments creatively	Comic Strip	or
To capture my week emotionally	Soundtrack of the Week

Taking time to notice what happens in your daily life - and practicing this regularly - helps you build the habit of learning from every experience, even beyond volunteering.