by Daria.
I didn’t start volunteering because I thought I could “make a difference” or had some grand mission. I think I was just tired of how disconnected people are, and how conversations around migration and community are dominated by fear, media spin, and outrage.
And I mean from ‘both sides’.
I’ve seen how some people in the UK feel alienated or overlooked, especially when services like housing are stretched out. Those who fear migration because of cultural changes, economic pressures, and the social shifts it bring to their country. At the same time, I’ve been honest with people on ‘the other side of the journey’. [To people who idolise Europe], I shared the stories of friends who, even after years of living here, still don’t feel able to be completely honest with their families back home. Some hide their struggles to avoid shame. Others are stuck, never fully at home here, but no longer at home there either.
But I also see beauty. I see people come here, gain skills, build resilience, and sometimes take that back to their home countries to make real, lasting change. That matters a lot, I believe.
I wouldn’t say my perspective has “shifted” from one point to another. Rather it has expanded.
Each person I’ve met adds another layer to an already complex picture. But if something has changed in me, it’s not clarity, instead it’s comfort with not having clear answers. If anything has helped me grow, it’s the act of sitting with that discomfort. Volunteering didn’t resolve the issue for me, it just made me more willing to dwell in the grey, in the disagreement, in the unsolved.
I am finding my peace of mind not from resolution, but from presence, from being willing to act even in the absence of answers.
And as a person, I love to contemplate but I’ve always believed that actions speaks louder and carries more weight than contemplation alone. Volunteering, for me, was a choice to act. It was inspired by the deep friendships I made in Africa, by the painful truths I hear about the borders of my home country in Poland, and by the countless stories of those who die trying to reach better opportunities.
That’s how I build my reflections now, through small gestures. Because honestly, I think that’s all that’s left in a world full of divided camps shouting past each other. Sometimes, the best we can offer is a walk, a conversation, and coffee. And maybe, that’s where something real and meaningful, in the long term, can begin.
What three words would describe your volunteering experience?
To be honest, the experience feels too layered and too full of contradictions to reduce to just three words. But if I had to extract three that capture the core of what it has meant to me, they would be:
Uncomfortable. Grounding. Expansive
Uncomfortable because sitting with people in their uncertainty, grief, or hope especially across cultural, political, or religious differences, forces me to confront my own assumptions and limitations.
But also uncomfortable because of how I’m perceived. What some imagine about my life, my wealth, ease, and freedom just because I’m a white European with a degree and the right to stay in the UK, often feels far from reality. I’m an immigrant too. My entire family is back in Poland, and I’m still struggling like many other young people here with questions around housing, stability, family and what kind of future is even possible.
Often, when I’m seen alongside my befriending partner, people who don’t know either of us will assume that what’s visible on the outside reflects security or success on my side, and a lack of it on theirs. This plays out in small, everyday spaces, local shops, cafés and makes me reflect on how quick we are to help those we see as “other,” while overlooking the quiet struggles of someone who looks more familiar, someone we might call a neighbour, simply because they carry the label of “privilege”.
Grounding because volunteering through Bridges strips away abstraction and brings me back to presence, a conversation, a walk, a shared silence. Things that feel small but carry deep meaning.
Expansive because every person I meet adds to the bigger picture. Even when there are no clear answers, the complexity opens me up instead of closing me off. It reminds me to hold space for contradiction and stay humble in the face of what I don’t yet understand or what I would like to change but have no power.