About Me & This Website
My name is Celine Diels. I am 16 years old and I have lived my entire life in Hoofddorp in the Netherlands.
My family consists of my two loving parents: Marco and Bettiny; my two elder brothers: Robbin and Daniel; my little sister Jennifer; and me of course. We also have two pets: a dog named Lady and a lovebird called Elmo.
My hobbies are: photography, travelling, watching movies, reading, listening to music and crafting.
This year I decided I wanted to spend my summer a little differently. Instead of sitting at home all day, being bored and watching my summer pass by, I decided I wanted to do something memorable and worthwhile... I wanted to do some voluntary work!
But where do I want to go to? What kind of voluntary work would I like to do? For how long would I like to do this work? With all these questions in mind I started to search the internet for voluntary work abroad and soon I ended up on the website of Projects Abroad.
With the many worldwide destinations where Projects Abroad offers volunteers the chance to work on a wide variety of different projects, it was hard for me to decide which project I wanted to do and where I wanted to go. However, there were a few things that made it easier for me to pick a destination. I wanted to go to a country where it was warm, where there were no epidemic diseases and where they spoke English.
Soon my attention was grabbed by a teen special building project in a little island in the Caribbean... Jamaica! I really liked the idea of attending the teen special where we would be supervised and would be able to work with other teens from all over the world. I decided I wanted to do the building project because I'm interested in architecture and I like working with my hands. I could have made the decision to do the building project in another country, but I just fell more and more in love with Jamaica as I read about the culture, the people, the climate, the beautiful places and all the entertaining activities you could do in Jamaica.
As much as I was looking forward to doing this voluntary project, I first had to convince my parents to allow me to go all the way to Jamaica on my own. We had many conversations, visited the Projects Abroad openday in Amsterdam and talked with an ex-volunteer who went to Jamaica to do a similar project. It took a while, but in the end my parents agreed to let me go. It was now time for me to find a way to get all the money together to pay for this project and my flight tickets. I took a job, started fund raising, participated in the Color Run and got myself sponsored, did some chores and saved my pocket money. With the help of my parents, friends and family I was able to get the money together and get on the plane to Jamaica on the 4th of July.
I spent a little more than two weeks in Jamaica (what hindsight, was way too short). I was able to make a valuable contribution to the building of toilets for a primary school in Old England; I met many interesting and lovely people; I made lots of new friends; I learned so much about the Jamaican culture and discover the many differences with my own culture; I developed new skills, and above all of that, I just simply fell in love with this beautiful country.
I have truly had the time of my life in Jamaica and for that reason I would like to share my experience with all of you and hopefully I will inspire you to do some sort of voluntary work as well or just inspire you to visit and experience Jamaica for yourself; you won't regret it for a single moment!
One Love, One Heart!