"Participating in Entre Joves volunteering has opened my mind"

The Entre Joves project is based on inclusion and work with young unaccompanied migrants, and involves the participation of UAB students in different volunteer activities, such as mentorships, group activities and awareness-raising activities related to the topic.

This year, there have been several group activities such as an intercultural afternoon snack to get to know each other, basketball, volleyball and body percussion activities. During the percussion class, some time was given over to hearing the impressions of the participant UAB students.

Helena Torrelles, an international relations student and volunteer on this programme, explained that “being a mentor is about helping and accompanying a young unaccompanied migrant with this change process after they arrived from a country alone, and helping them to integrate.” Mentoring is a methodology that uses a buddy system involving accompaniment, exchange and knowledge transfer based on a trusting relationship. Mentorships happen in pairs weekly or fortnightly on the UAB Campus or in the surrounding area. Fabiola Castany, one the programme’s organisers and a student of international relations, says that “through mentoring, we give the young people and volunteers the autonomy to build the relationship as they want.”

At the FAS, we promote this methodology in several volunteering programmes in which young people from different backgrounds but at similar moments of their lives do things together, thereby promoting acceptance, inclusion and a critical outlook. As Salma, a volunteer and student of business administration and management in English, explains, “volunteering introduces different perspectives, because we sometimes live in a bubble and don’t look outside, it opens our minds a bit.” Fabiola also stresses that “the programme offers young people the chance to forge a social bond that society doesn’t give us. And the chance to meet students from the country to help us feel more settled here.”

The ultimate goal of Entre Joves is to create a fairer and more equal society with spaces for coexistence and bonding. Bonds like the one Helena has made with one of the young people. She says that “I like to contrast ideas and get to know new realities”, concluding that “volunteering has helped me to be a little more sociable and to know more. Meeting someone else from a different culture and with different habits has made me more open-minded.”