“Before coming to Malta, I expected this one-year experience to be a bit of a vacation and a bit of gaining experience in the environmental field. However, the team’s genuine love for their work, the effort and dedication they put in, very quickly led me to develop a sense of belonging and embrace the cause.

Working at Foem means taking a break to listen to the robin’s song even when we’re most focused, learning a new plant name every day, and if you’ve cooked a meal, learning five new recipes based on its main ingredient.

During this time, I developed my experience in project implementation, monitoring, and evaluation processes, community building and community wellbeing, partnership and collaboration development. Choosing a single project or piece of work is very difficult for me, but through projects such as Youth Hub, Community Gardening, and Calm-EY, where people come together, I learned how different people can work to form communities, learn from each other, and grow together.

I also became part of a long-term dream for FoEM. Il-Forn ta’ Kemmuna, a vision to one day turn the old bakery into an education center. With this dream, Comino became a place that I planned my next visit to at every opportunity, a place that I imagined and was excited about to see how it will change in 2 years, 5 years, 10 years.

Alongside all this, it meant working in a place with a youthful spirit and an area striving to open up to young people, accepting the intersection of environmental struggles and their connection to all other struggles, keeping a broad focus, and valuing the well-being of life, those around us, and ourselves”.

Thank you for the energy you brought to the team, and good luck

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The European Solidarity Corps is co-funded by the European Union. The Youth Programme of Friends of the Earth Malta is supported by Aġenzija Żgħażagħ through the INVEST Operational Grant 2023-2025.