Italy
participants
The goal of the activity was to let the international students get to know part of the local community they live in and let them feel part of it through a volunteering experience with autistic people.
We went to Mogliano Veneto, a town close to Venice, by train and met with the members of the association ANGSA Treviso. ANGSA (National Association of Parents of People with Autism) is made up of parents, family members and guardians of people with autism and it's a non-profit association spread throughout the national territory. In particular, for this event we collaborated with the Treviso section within the framework of their project "Addolciamo l'Autismo" (a translation could be: Let's Make Autism Sweeter), which gives 6 autistic young people the space and possibility to work as bakers. During the activity, they showed us how to cook and then baked with us gingerbread biscuits, which are christmas traditional biscuits.
This event makes us proud under many aspects. We fostered the collaboration between international and exchange students and the volunteers and bakers of the ANGSA association and managed to give to this event a volunteering character, that allowed our students to get closer to an association active on the territory they live in and to feel more like an insider in this foreign environment (moreover thanks to our help, the bakers of the association could sell more biscuits to their clients). Finally, we fostered the possibility of getting to know other realities that are not common for an international/exchange student but neither are so distant in terms of real life.
