Seeds is project about social entrepreneurship and done in 2015 by NGO:s in Europe and South America. It includes meetings, trainings, job shadowings and local actions. Rural Youth Europe is not a partner, but since the Secretary General has couched the project she also host a job shadower from Peru, Lourdes "Lu" Vargas for a few days in September 2015.
During these days Lu get familiar with Rural Youth Europe and daily routines of at Pia´s family farm, and before and after this she visit also other organisations in Finland. This is how Lu describes her first days at the job shadowing:
This job shadowing experience started 5 days ago. I met about 4 other projects in Finland: Kynnys, Ekotori, Troja and working on the Vänö island. Now I am learning about Rural Youth Europe and Finnish farming. It is amazing how similar we are – there is an ocean between Perú and Finland, but I still feel like I am at home.
In Perú, we have a lot of organisations. People with all kinds of knowledge, professions and experiences come together and work as a team, meaning we can do a lot in our society. These are the ingredients to make an incredible synergy.
In Perú I am a volunteer of a NGO named TECHO. We build wooden houses together with people that experience situations of poverty. The persons might not have economic slack, but they have same routines and thoughts as the volunteers.
To better understand the situation where we plan to work, we move for one week to the zone where we will work and live with those in the same situation.
For example, we can not use a lot of water, we eat the same food, use the same toilet. In the end of the week we have created this feeling of community, we are the same equal persons, with goals, life expectations, problems and joys.
For the last two days and a half days I have lived together with two German girls and Pia´s friendly family. We have done many different things and I am learning a lot about apple farming, horse breeding, elk hunting and European NGOs. We have a lot of things in common. The experience to share is really the most wonderful thing that you can do to realise that this world has a lot of colours but is the same landscape.
Thanks for these days,
Lourdes Vargas from Lima, Perú
