Tola, my ESC project

This month I want to share a bit more about what I am doing at work as I think a lot of
people cannot imagine volunteering in a centre for people with functional diversity. Before I
came to „TOLA “(which is the name of the Centre), I did not know what to expect, especially
since I never worked in that field neither nor know a Person with functional diversity.


I will never forget the moment I entered the centre. I felt a bit nervous but at the same time
excited to get to know everyone. The moment I stepped into the building, one of the
„Usuarios” (the people in the centre), saw me and shouted, „La chica nueva ha llegado“,
which means „The new girl arrived“. Everyone was super thrilled that I was here, and I
immediately felt welcome. Since that day many, many months passed by and I experienced a
lot of different things.


For the first three or four months I spent my time in the gym with the physiotherapist, which
I really enjoyed. There I did exercises with different groups through which I got to know
everyone very fast. Additionally, I went to Zumba and Nordic walking classes, four times per
week. Even though I enjoyed doing it, I was glad that my schedule changed since after many
months of doing the same thing, it got boring.


Therefor I started to join different groups, went for numerous of walks and helped wherever
it was needed. Especially in one group I spent most of my time, chatting, going for walks and
doing maths. Once in a while the centre does excursions, like visits to the mountain,
museums or to eat out. Those are always the best days, yet they do not happen that often.
After „Las Fallas “all of the groups changed as well as my well organised schedule. Now I
have a lot of spear time where I often do nothing, which is exhausting. My main tasks now is
helping in the dining room, join the Nordic walking-, and swimming classes and lead a
linguistic lesson with one of the Usuarias. As I am feeling comfortable at „Tola“and I like my
colleagues, time always passes fast, still I think it is a pity that I do not get to do more things,
as I definitely could help in other ways . Additionally, I wish that at the beginning they would
have explained more about the different health related difficulties everyone has, in order to
understand them better. In general, I really love working there, as I have a lot of fun with the
people, still often it is exhausting listening to everyone and one-sided.


I hope anyone reading that got an insight of what I have been doing the last seven months.