During the 50’s, a lot of political regimes were dictatorial where freedoms were violated. For example, in Spain, from 1939 (the end of the civil war) to 1977 (the first free elections during the democratic transition) many people died and disappeared without any reasons. The dictator, Francisco Franco tortured his people. Another example, in Germany, Hitler did the same as Franco that’s to say killed his people until the end of the 2nd world war. Anyway, nowadays these countries have become democratic regimes where human rights and freedoms are supposed to be respected.
 
Yes, you read it well, I wrote “supposed” because I’m wondering if our democratic systems are really democratic.
What’s a democracy? It’s supposed to be the government of the people, for the people, by the people. That’s to say, the people vote for the candidate they want to be their representant who should act first for the wellbeing of the people. So, most of the countries are democratic and we have to protect it by acting in our political systems. What I mean, is that if you don’t agree with your democratic system, if you’re not feeling listened, or if you are a victim of any violence, you should not be apart of the political system but take part in it. For example, by protesting in order to show your disagreement, or talking to someone about the violence you’re victim of.
 
So, as I wrote, democracies are supposed to respect human rights. For instance, in the country of human rights, France, there are many hidden police violence. Police officers are supposed to represent the state and the justice but how can they kill someone because of his colour skin at the same time?  By way of illustration, Adama Traoré, a French man was killed by a police officer while he got arrested. At 24 years old, he tried to run away from a police control and died because of a ventral tackle done by a policeman as many other people.
Finally, there are more and more examples to illustrate that, as Churchill said, “democracy is a bad system, but it is the least bad of all systems”.

When my friend told me she wasn’t allowed to vote I was shocked. She came to Germany when she was still a child and lived there for over ten years but she was not allowed to give her opinion on how her country should be ruled because on paper it was not her country. She was excluded from deciding over a system that was effecting her everyday life.
 
We call our system the “government of the people”, a system where everyone’s voice is equal, but how can we if not everyone has the same opportunities to engage in politics?
 
This phenomenon dates back to the supposed first democracy: Greece. We only associate it with good things: Freedom and the power of the people who could finally decide for themselves. However, we forget that the majority of the population (women and slaves) were not allowed to vote – and, oh wonder, there were no bills passed that benefited these groups.
So you could say that this system was still an aristocracy - a government of the few over the many.
 
The same problem still exists today. There are no bills passed that favor those who have no voting right. How can we expect to stop racism if the people most affected by this are not allowed to engage politically?
 
It is often argued that people who do not have the citizenship should not have the same rights because “they don’t really belong to our society”. But the truth is that you cannot decide who belongs to your society. If they are here, they are impacting others and ergo part of the system. The only question is if we give migrants a chance to be an active part of society and let them form their own environment for example by electing someone who represents their interests. Or if we refuse them this opportunity and force them to live an other-directed life - robbed of power and their human rights.
In a real democracy we should choose the first option.
 
So, why don’t we give everyone the voting right of the state that they mostly live in? Why don’t we erase the need for bureaucratic procedures? Why don’t we honor human rights and especially the freedom of the individual?

Hi, I’m Maria, and I’ve been volunteering with Praxis for the past 2 months. About this experience I can only say that I’m genuinely GRATEFUL. If I had to sum up my experience, I would say it was a grow up.
All my life I’ve been wanting to live abroad, to visit countries, to travel, since I was very very little. I always used to tell my dad (that also loves to travel and did it a lot) to help me to do scholarships, to beg him to take me with him in his travels, and in fact, before coming here I’ve been in a few. I used to go in popular places, running, wanting to see everything, just to mark it, just to say “I’ve been here” in my personal map. I never thought that that wasn’t travelling, that that wasn’t knowing new places.

To know a place, to visit a new city it ́s to buy an ice cream and eating it in a square watching carefully all the details, sleeping in a park after finding the most mesmerizing beach, running a lot and climbing a mountain to see the perfect sunset, hearing what the neighbor complains about, learning some words in the local language <3<3<3. Understanding, understanding a lot, contextualizing, loving and trying to be involved in a culture, to really feel what’s happening around you, to be kind to the environment, that is really travelling, that is really knowing a city,
a town, that is a real connecting.

I also thought that I was quite mature, that I knew how to talk with people, that I was respectful, that I knew what to say in the perfect moment. I was so wrong. It’s not that I didn' t respect people around me, but I did everything in the wrong way, so selfish. I don ́t know how
to quite explain, but now I can really see. I can stop all the anxiety that characterize my way of thinking, I can breathe and now I can really listen. Not just the words, I can listen the real meaning behind them. In these two months I’ve have had a thousand of fights, not serious ones, for sure, but they were important because you really start to know how people work, how they think, who they are. You can realize how you don’t know what other people is going through, how complicated can their lives be, and if they weren’t complicated: you don’t know their context, their education, their opportunities. I always had the theory: “Listen, don’t
judge, be kind” but now the real meaning touched me. In this two months I ́ve been diving in other people’s minds, in their routines, in the intention behind their acts, in how easy it’s to understand, in how important is to really speak our minds and to express our feelings. And most important: to stop, to see and to love. To close your eyes and to breathe, synchronizing with everything that surrounds you.

In these two months I learn a lot, but if there’s something that marked me a lot it’s how I' ve been learning to love the beauty of ephemerality. It’s been complicated. Saying goodbye a thousand times with tears in my eyes really broke my heart every time. To love someone so close and then just having the thought of “you may never see them again” I cannot really
explain how difficult, really. Just the anxiety that it provoked me to collect everything that a person can teach you and being sad because maybe you didn’t used all the time the person had to offer, or just the thought of maybe forgetting everything that they have given you in a few years. But after a few late night conversations, with loved ones and myself, I think I’m really ready to start loving and enjoying the perfect-in-time-that-don’t-last-the-time-I-want connections and relationships.

So, as I was saying, this two months, made me realize the real meaning of a lot of things, made me see the real world, made me see myself and taught me the way I want to spend the rest of my days in earth: knowing, learning, loving, enjoying as much as I can.

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MARIA BOLLERO GONZALEZ

Maria is a Spanish volunteer in Praxis organization, writing her own experience about the project.

I love bougatsa. For those who doesn’t know, it’s a type of Greek pastry, made with layers of filo, and filled with cream or other things. I don’t know which other things because I like the one with cream, the sweet one. Also, you can ask to have sugar and cinnamon on the top… Amazing. In Greece, Serres, where I did my volunteering, it’s like the “house of bougatsa”, and, I can assure, bougatsas there are great.

I like the idea of bougatsa: tasty pastry, you can have it for breakfast, lunch or even dinner, depending on what you put inside. There’s a bougatsa for everyone and for every moment, with different qualities, useful and likeable all of them.

And I think the secret of a good volunteering team it’s the same, and that is why my experience in Praxis has been so nice: inside, each one is different, we  have different strong and not-so-strong skills, and the importance is to know it to learn from others and to complete each other, in a way that you can have a sweet bougatsa for breakfast and a salty one for lunch (for example).

I’ve spent the summer co-living with other 7 people, and, instead of chaos, what I had was a lot of learning, growing and good memories. We did a really good team, not because we were the best, but because we knew our strengths: me for example, I’m awful attracting people to activities, but I’m really organize, so of course other people would be the “public relationship” one while doing events.

In general, we do volunteer thinking we are going to help other people, or even the whole world, but let’s stop being so selfish: at the end of the day, a volunteering experience teaches you more than what you teach others. And realizing about that is amazing: I came to Greece for “helping others”, for “making the world a better place”, and at the end, the world made me a better person.

In Greece, I had some kind of a “new start”, and with this new people I just showed myself as I am. It’s a great moment to do it: nobody knows you, there is no prejudice, and this feeling of freedom, of no judgment… Not only I felt great, but I learnt a lot about myself, thanks to being out of my comfort zone, in other culture, and also thanks to my amazing mates, who, as me, came here with an  open-minded attitude.

If you are hesitating about going abroad for a volunteer, let me help you decide: DO IT. It’s enriching in too many ways I can’t write all in one article. So just do it, and if you have the opportunity, taste a bougatsa.

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JULIA AGUILAR CABELLO
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Julia is a Spanish volunteer in Praxis organization, writing her own experience about the project.