1. EUROPEAN COMMISSION
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EUROPEAN VOLUNTARY SERVICE
José Maria Texeira Bastos Vaz e Gala
BORN ON 22/11/1987 IN Lisbon, Portugal
PARTICIPATED AS A VOLUNTEER IN THE PROJECT
STRANA EVS IDEA
IN THE RECEIVING ORGANISATION STRANAIDEA
S.C.S. IMPRESA SOCIALE ONLUS.
THE PROJECT TOOK PLACE FROM 05/09/2014
TO 04/09/2015 IN TURIN, Italy.
EUROPEAN VOLUNTARY SERVICE
The aim of European Voluntary Service in Erasmus+ is to develop solidarity and promote active citizenship of young people.
During their stay of up to 12 months in the receiving country, young people contribute to social cohesion and considerably
enhance their personal, professional and intercultural competences.
European Voluntary Service is carried out in partnerships between young volunteers, organisations in their country of residence
and organisations in a receiving country.
Erasmus+ is the European Union’s programme for boosting skills and employability through activities organised in the field
of education, training, youth, and sport. Youth activities under Erasmus+ aim to improve the key competences, skills and
employability of young people, promote young people's active participation in the society, their social inclusion and well-being,
and foster improvements in youth work and youth policy at local, national and international level.
CINZIA POLICASTRO - President
Representative of the organisation
The ID of this certificate is ZPL2-LZU1-Z2XX-11FC.
If you want to verify the ID, please go to the web site of Youthpass:
http://www.youthpass.eu/qualitycontrol/
Youthpass is a Europe-wide validation system for non-formal learning
within the Erasmus+: Youth in Action Programme. For further
information, please have a look at http://www.youthpass.eu.

2. PROJECT INFORMATION
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This document certifies that José Maria Texeira Bastos Vaz e Gala spent his European Voluntary Service in the project
STRANA EVS IDEA in TURIN, Italy with the organisation STRANAIDEA S.C.S. IMPRESA SOCIALE ONLUS.
The role and tasks of José Maria Texeira Bastos Vaz e Gala were:
I made my project in 2 daily centers for disable people with light and more serious disabilities. My role was to be
able to establish a good and positive relationship with the users, to support them and the educators to carry out daily
activities to spend well-being time and to improve the abilities and competences of users. The activities were artistic to
create objects to be sold, on socialisation, on communication, etc. I proposed my workshops on a blog, on comics, on
caricatures.
José Maria Texeira Bastos Vaz e Gala took part in the following training activities:
The National Agency organised: On-arrival training: 22-29/01/2015 in Rimini, Italy, organisation: MODAVI/
REPLAY;Mid-term evaluation: 6-9/03/2015 Nola (NA), Italy, organisation: AMESCI
Stranaidea organised intercultural activities on knowledge of Stranaidea and its services; the city and its services;
group building, communication, expectations on EVS, house sharing and its rules; Youthpass; evaluations on the
project group/individual; video and artistic trainings, creative writing.
The receiving organisation STRANAIDEA S.C.S. IMPRESA SOCIALE ONLUS offers the following:
Stranaidea is a no profit organisation. It works in different sectors: educational activities with disable people (education,
riabilitation in its social therapeutical centers; enternships in work places) and with children/their families; social and
community theatre projects on social inclusion and about local communities involving young people, disable people,
common people, immigrants; European projects; services dedicated to homeless and adults in need; projects with
Roma Turin communities.
The sending organisation of José Maria Texeira Bastos Vaz e Gala was ProAtlântico – Associação Juvenil from
Porto Salvo (Portugal).
We certify the participation of José Maria Texeira Bastos Vaz e Gala in this European Voluntary Service project STRANA
EVS IDEA.
Silvia Padello
Person in charge of the projectTurin, 25/06/2015

3. INDIVIDUAL LEARNING OUTCOMES
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José Maria Texeira Bastos Vaz e Gala participated in the European Voluntary Service project STRANA EVS IDEA
in TURIN, Italy between 05/09/2014 and 04/09/2015.
The following summary of José Maria Texeira Bastos Vaz e Gala's learning outcome is the result of an ongoing dialogue
process between José Maria Texeira Bastos Vaz e Gala and his mentor Silvia Padello during the whole activity.
The following description of learning outcomes is a reflection related to the Key Competences for Lifelong Learning
recommended by the European Parliament and the Council in December 2006.
COMMUNICATION IN MOTHER TONGUE
After a longer time of only using Italian it was difficult to form sentences in my own mother tongue and I tended to use
Italian expressions and idioms, but translated into Portuguese, which shows the impact that the everyday usage of the
foreign language had as also a positive sign of my progress. Additionaly, I became more aware of Portuguese language's
characteristics by seeing the differences between them and I learned to hold Portuguese in high regard when I realised it's
great grammatical and expressional possibilities, which I was partly aware of before, and which I have now rediscovered again.
But the most important thing that I have concluded was that being in Italy, my mother tongue then have become simultaneously
a tool of identification with another (emigrant like myself), a tool of inclusion (of another emigrant like myself) and a tool of
exclusion (of those, who do not speak portuguese).
COMMUNICATION IN FOREIGN LANGUAGES
Speaking, writing and thinking in Italian has changed my way of thinking. Learning Italian with the principles of English language
and with Portuguese understanding made me capable of making comparisons between languages. I was thinking in three
different languages at the same time. When I was learning to speak and write in Italian I started using the english language
system (i.e. order of words in sentences) leaving Portuguese for third plan, but then quickly changed to use the Portuguese
morphology because, through my mother tongue, learning the Italian language as also understanding his grammar was easier
than using English. So by using the Italian language both at work and in my leisure time, I improved my language skills, both
in speaking and understanding, to a large extent. Not only in everyday conversations, but also in unexpected and unprepared
situations, such as at the doctor's in the bank or even at the bar, when you don't have the specific vocabulary needed. In these
situations you learn to improvise verbally also because you are almost obliged to it, taking in account that in Italy the percentage
of people that knows or talks english is really very low. Daily reading in newspapers, books, magazines and text on the Internet
helped me to improve my reading comprehension; watching films, television and videos, my listening comprehension.
DIGITAL COMPETENCE
As part of my work in the Disabled daily centre (Casa di Zenzero), I entrusted myself with the task of creating and
devolping 'a digital life' setting up a blog and a facebook page to represent the Centre (The result can be seen
at www.zenzeroboys.blogspot.it and https://www.facebook.com/pages/I-ragazzi-di-Zenzero/706663379429250?fref=ts). I did

4. INDIVIDUAL LEARNING OUTCOMES
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that job alone, but at the same time trying that each disabled of the Centre could made part of it, to become the blog also their.
At first, I had to do research on the Internet to see what content we might need and then to came up with ideas for the design of
the blog and facebook page. I had some own experience in blog programming before, but as the technology is developing so
quickly, I had to refresh my knowledge and familiarise myself with those new technologies. At the staff meeting, I had to present
the final result to my mentor and to the staff from the Centre. They were really impressed and very much appreciated my work.
The idea of the blog and facebook page was a new way to use weekly the digital technologies with the envolvement of each
disabled from the Centre, which ended to be a huge sucess and to have the engament of everyone from Casa de Zenzero.
LEARNING TO LEARN
During EVS I had a huge number, as also different, types of challenges which made me learn not only more about me and
my limits, but essentialy how to plan and manage projects in order to achieve objectives in difficult situations. I learnt to live
and to cope in the same house everyday with 5 different people from different nationalities; to be more open minded; learnt
how to motivate myself and have the self-confidence to succeed not only at work but outside too; to understand my own habits
that I should develop, such as reflecting on my learnings so as to improve next time; but my major and lasting learning was
the project itself: In Portugal I hadn't previously almost worked with disabled people and so for me the project was undobtly
a rich and learning experience. Through processing my time in Italy with other volunteers, friends and mentors as well as
during the trainings that I attended, I became more ready to express and share my emotions, thoughts and experiences as
also gave me the opportunity and skills to reflect upon the different stages of my time as a volunteer and what role they play
for my future and life in general.
SOCIAL AND CIVIC COMPETENCES
In my daily work with disabled and the situations which arise in the course of that, I learned a lot about how to deal with them
and that my emotional as well as physical support can be an invaluable source of strength. It showed me that improvisation as
a combination of common sense is very often more important in everyday life than doing something according to strict rules,
because having to deal with disabled people is a thing that in main part of the momments you can't anticipate what will happen
next. When you start into a group of disabled you have to find your position: you are the "educator" but you still want to be their
friend. It's challenging to be authoritarian, friendly and caring at the same time. It needs empathy to work with them: motivating
them, solving conflicts, being patient. Anyway, I gained much experience and I really enjoyed the work, so now I consider
myself to have been successful in that job. The experience in the house where I lived during the volunteering was also fairly
new for me. Living 6 people in the same house is already not easy, more difficult when these 6 people are all form different
countries and nationalities. A difficult but most of all an enriching experience that have forced me to adapt to things that were
unfamiliar and unusual, because the difficulties that we had in learning how to live together during almost one year gave the
opportunity to grow and develop as a person, gave me the opportunity to discover things about myself that I didn't know before;
my beliefs, my passions, my character. Through interacting daily within a foreign habits and cultures, my eyes opened to all
sorts of aspects of life that would be difficult to learn in my native country.
SENSE OF INITIATIVE AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
I organized several different projects in the daily centre throughout the year, such as the Caricature's laboratory, Cartoons'
Laboratory, the construction of a Memory Game, as also various activities on the blog, all of them together with the disabled.
In doing so I learned how to plan, prepare and organise such events, besides the fact that I understood that we should use

5. INDIVIDUAL LEARNING OUTCOMES
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every opportunity which presents itself, even though you sometimes need to be quite brave to get to it. In each staff meeting I
learned how to bring in criticism and mention problems in an appropriate way and how to bring in my own ideas.
CULTURAL AWARENESS AND EXPRESSION
This was the first time that I lived abroad and I understood that only when you leave your own familiar surroundings you are
be able to become more aware, not only about the culture's abroad, but mainly of your own Country/City. By noticing that
something that you were used all your life suddenly is absent or completely different in another country, you realise it to be a
peculiarity of your own culture. It was very interesting to get to know the views, perceptions and stereotypes about your own
language and country not only from the other my volunteers companions but also from the italians that I've meet during that
time. This has opened a new point of view and made me reflect and become more tolerant towards other cultures. Culture
refers to the total way of life of any society and so I understood that in order to really get to know a foreign culture, you have
to become a part of it. By getting to know local people, participating in various activities, going out at night, dealing with Italian
food and music, etc, I started discovering the Italian culture, integrated myself and became involved with the city of Turin.
We confirm the mutual process of reflection during European Voluntary Service.
José Maria Texeira Bastos
Vaz e Gala
Volunteer
Silvia Padello
Mentor of the volunteer
Turin, 25/06/2015
Further information and original documents on the Key Competences for Lifelong Learning:
http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/education_training_youth/lifelong_learning/c11090_en.htm
Further information about the Erasmus+: Youth in Action Programme and Youthpass:
http://ec.europa.eu/youth/programme and www.youthpass.eu