My experience volunteering in Dublin

SEDA student Alessandra Palmieri Do Nascimento spent a great day out volunteering on the banks of the Royal Canal in Dublin.

I had never done any volunteer work in Brazil, and I decided to try it here in Dublin.

First of all, I visited the website www.volunteerdublincity.ie. I registered and started looking for some opportunities, finally applying for one of them.  The next day, I received an e-mail explaining about the work, which would be taking out rubbish thrown into the Royal Canal.

Then, at 10 am on a Saturday I met with the group of volunteers who would be working with me. Most of them were Irish, but there were also people of other nationalities and I even met one Brazilian! The volunteers explained us how to work. I couldn’t understand some of the words because they spoke so fast, and the accent made it more difficult to grasp.

They gave me some equipment to pick up the rubbish with and a plastic bag. Then we had to form groups and I chose to stay with two Irish people.

In the beginning I was very shy because it was difficult to understand what they were saying. They tried to talk to me but I answered with just a few words.

While I was cleaning, a man passed by and told me: “You’re doing a great job! Congratulations.” I was so happy.

I had no idea how much rubbish people throw away into the river. There were many glass bottles, beer cans, plastic sacks, plastic cup and others types of waste.

Towards the end of the day I got more courage and started to ask the Irish people in my group a lot of things about tourism, football, food, drink and I could see that sometimes they didn’t understand my Americanised English, nor could I understand all of their Irish English.

Finally, when our work was done, the group met in a pub to have a cup of coffee and to talk, and I realised that it is a part of the Irish culture to celebrate and to talk. I met some marvellous people and I talked a lot!

It was gratifying and I look forward to the next meeting to help preserve the environment and learn more about Irish people.

I should have done some work like this in Brazil. How many good opportunities we lose, don’t we?

Originally published in SEDA News