ESC volunteer to help people with intellectual disabilities Volunteers say
This is the testimony of Piero, who serves as an ESC volunteer in Belgium at the Arche Brussels.
What Piero tells us:
"My life as an ESC volunteer in Belgium is going really well. I am serving at L'Arche Bruxelles, an organization that hosts thirty-three adults with a mental disability and helps them to live a quality life.
At the moment I live in an organization house: it is a facility that cares for seven people who have varying degrees of mental impairment. Together with them I live with four other volunteers: two German girls, a French girl and a Spanish boy. We are supervised by three educators who help us keep the ranks of our daily life. The people we follow are surprisingly autonomous, needing no help or special assistance, and speak exclusively in French. Contrary to what I expected, the latter did not prove to be an insurmountable obstacle, even though I started with very basic linguistic notions. The language course at the school I attend is certainly helping me a lot.
In any case, what I do here is very simply live with all these people and participate in various domestic and community activities. So we make pies, arrange the garden, eat together, walk around Brussels and watch some movies over the weekend. We took the photo recently, during a birthday party of one of the volunteers: it was a precious opportunity to bring a joyful atmosphere into the house!"
