Hello everyone!!

My name is Valentina, i’m 18 years old, from Colombia. I finished the school the last year but I wasn’t ready to go at university; Something was missing in my life, then I started to search for voluntary service and I found L.O.O.P. (Life Out Of Plastic). L.O.O.P. appeal my attention because this organization search teach at people about the danger of contamination for plastic. I want to be volunteer because I realize of the contamination is so much, because when I go at the beach I see many trash and not just the plastic sometimes when I wake up I don’t see the sky because the contamination cover it and the air in the cities is more dense than countries, I really don’t like this, so i want to improve the world even if it is a little bit, so I started work in L.O.O.P. in this year in Peru.

My first week was in the beach of Carpayo in Peru, I didn’t know but Carpayo beach the dirtiest in Latin America; I'll never forget the first week, we found all kinds of garbage like food, needles, clothes, some oil, some dead animals, all kinds of plastic and more, my companions and me were the new volunteers and that experience was horrible, some people vomited and cried to see all that, at end of these week we was cried and many volunteers went back to their houses, the only thing good was that those who stayed joined more. The second week was stronger because we found a corpse, I remember that some people fainted when they saw it, I was in shock but when the paramedics took him I try to stay calm, I drink some water and finish the work of that day, the rest of the week was calm, just normal garbage but the tension and fear of finding something worse never went away. When we end the second week we were exhausted and the superiors said they gave us some free time to relax us a little.

 

They gave us a free day, many people went to drink all day but the rest of us decide to go for a walk and just learn about that place, and do anything, we went to eat ceviche but I decided to eat chicken, and it was the best because many got sick after; at the end we were only 7 people and we didn’t know what to do, so we decide to go back to rest; We buy sweets and drinks and we stay talking about trivialities until we fall asleep.

I think the benefits I got were that in the end I was able to fill that void I had, I feel like I could help the planet a little and I felt very happy when the locals asked to help and it was very good to see that certain parts of the beach were quite clean. I think people should volunteer to better understand other points of view and realize how bad the planet is and how horrible many people in this world are, so try to change little by little.