Anna’s project in Finland – ‘On the Guitar Strings’

While being a volunteer of the European Solidarity Corps in Finland, Anna put in place her own initiative of solidarity.  She created a Guitar club for children ‘On the Guitar Strings’

“As far back as I can remember, I have always loved music and wanted to connect my life with it. Starting at the age of 16, I began to dream about learning to play the guitar, but I had many fears that I might not succeed because of my previous bad experience playing another musical instrument, and I simply didn’t know where to start. However, through trial and error, I managed to master the instrument on my own.

When I started my volunteer project and found out about the possibility of conducting and organizing my own project of solidarity, my mind was full of thoughts and ideas about what I could do that would be so engaging and useful. However, the idea of organizing a guitar club for teenagers was the one that stood out among the bunch.

My purpose, which I took as the basis for the entire project, was to allow teenagers to fulfil their dream of learning to play the guitar and to make sure that while attending classes they not only mastered the instrument but also found new friends with the same interests and had space for self-expression.

For 3 sessions, we worked together to achieve this goal, and I can say with confidence that we succeeded. The children were sincerely happy to finally learn chords and learn to play their favourite songs on their own.

For me, it was also an incredible and exciting experience that I had never had before. It was a lot of fun, challenging and at the same time enjoyable to teach children how to play the guitar, how to strum chords and keep the rhythm.

I’m very glad that I had this opportunity to organize my own project of solidarity and thus be useful and help Ukrainian children, who are having a hard time adapting to a new environment, to realize their dreams and build new friendships.”

This initiative was supported along the CLIC project. C.L.I.C. for “Coordinating Locally in order to Increase More Changes with  the European solidarity Corps” is a cooperation partnership we participate  in with 9 other like-minded organisations from 9 European countries. Together, we want to increase the impact and the visibility of the European  Solidarity Corps in our communities, while providing young people with a  strong educational value along their volunteering projects.