👋 Hi there! I’m Živa and I am a 23 year old psychology student from Slovenia. Currently I am taking a gap year and I am an European solidarity corps volunteer in Koszalin, Poland where I will stay for 12 months. I am really passionate about promoting mental health care and also taking care of our environment.

🇩🇪 🇵🇱 I could talk about how I benefitted from the European Union for hours. I was 6 years old when Slovenia joined the EU and I basically grew up being a European. Thanks to a school project, I had my first Erasmus+ exchange when I was 13: I went to Kamienica, Poland for a week where I met many interesting people. Later on, during my studies I also participated in an Erasmus+ exchange in Konstanz, Germany where I completed one whole year of studies. I can truly say that this experience changed my life. It showed me that I am capable of moving to a foreign country, studying in a different language and it made me realize that the world isn’t such a big and scary place and that I would love to experience as much of it as I can.

🌍 Even though half of my exchange was marked by the start of pandemic, I still enjoyed every second of it. Experiencing post Erasmus depression, I then decided to try to go abroad again and that is how I joined European solidarity corps, which also gave me an opportunity to work in my study field and actually made me discover in which direction I would like to further my education.

🇪🇺 So, why NOT Europe? I cannot find any reason against the European Union. I have met my best friends because of the EU, I have grown as a person because of the experiences the EU made possible, I have discovered my passion and career path joining the projects from the EU, not to mention the languages that I had the opportunity to learn from native speakers. I would love to encourage more young people to take the opportunities the EU is giving us. Coming from a small country, I dare say that once you realize that you are European citizen, you start discovering many more open doors for both career and personal development.