Helping Hands - European Senior Volunteers in Action

Cascais hosts Finnish Volunteers!

 

Second phase of Senior Volunteer Project "Helping Hands" starts on the last week of March when six volunteers from Kuusankoski/Kouvola will arrive in Portugal for a three-week period.

A group of another six Portuguese volunteers, user members of Centro de Convívio Rosário, run by Junta de Freguesia Cascais-Estoril whom have travelled  to Finland past September, have together with Junta de Freguesia officers and Vida+Viva | Associação Animam Viventem members contributed to the preparation of a broad and comprehensive program in which they will also participate.

 

The program includes environment cleaning while hiking on PNSC – Nature Park Sintra/Cascais, which spreads on the two counties and covers one third of the territory in Cascais County. Volunteers will visit two or three different areas in this park.

 

The most important part of the program is related to interaction with disabled and elderly persons, during visits to CRID and SCML service center as it is well known that Finnish volunteers have long experience on these activities at home.

Interaction activities shall involve tea and cakes preparation and serving, considering that users of those centers, usually confined to their closed world, will be eager to have a taste of Finnish cakes while contacting, probably for the first time on their lives, with foreign visitors.

 

Our guests will, of course, have the chance to make acquaintance with Portuguese reality and daily life, on the occasion of programed visits to cultural sites and events, and, always a must, to local markets.

 

Our Finnish guests are very welcome, certainly a warm welcome!

 

A few degrees warmer

 

The voluntary project has started as planned. We were told that it was freezing in Finland this morning and have decided not to charge our guests with dramatic temperature changes. So, “by special arrangement”, they arrived in Cascais with higher temperature but a cool night wind.

From Lisbon airport they had a transfer service organized to bring them to the center of Cascais, where they had two cozy apartments waiting for them right located in the old town. Inês, Luz and Carlos Calado, representatives from Vida+Viva | Associação Animam Viventem hosted them and ensured that they were ready for following morning.

 

After a first contact with warm weather and a Portuguese cafeteria nearby  for hot coffee or tea, sandwiches and cakes, a short walk back to the meeting point, in between the two apartments and a short drive with Vida+Viva representatives to Centro de Convívio Rosário, were they were awaited by Portuguese friends. CC Rosário’s officer Isabel Santos and President of Junta de Freguesia Cascais-Estoril, Pedro Morais Soares joined the group for welcome salutations, visit to the place and review of the three weeks program. After a lunch inside the premises of Centro de Convívio Rosário, using a take away service from Cozinha com Alma, a restaurant with social mission, the group visited another center run by Junta de Freguesia, Centro de Convívio Areia hosted by Junta’s officer Rita Serra Coelho and met senior user members enjoying handicraft activities.

 

Friday started by 9,30 am at the meeting point in the old town center where a Junta’s minibus collected the six Finnish volunteers. After a short stop at CC Rosário, they were joined by Portuguese volunteers Maria José and António Vieira and forwarded to Nature Park Sintra-Cascais guided by José Reboca, driver of the minibus and an experienced hiker in this park. Plastic bags for paper and garbage collection were offered by Cascais Ambiente, a service company of Cascais County. In the afternoon the group returned downtown to visit Centro da Misericórdia de Cascais, for senior activities and choir singing. Misericórdias are the oldest social organization in Portugal, created by Queen Leonor, widow of King João II, back in 1498. In fact, Misericórdia de Lisboa was the first ONG in the world. There are several of them along Portugal, with the name Santa Casa da Misericórdia, followed by the name of the respective village, town, or city.

 

Sunny Saturday morning was perfect for a hiking along the seawalk “Paredão” to Estoril and a visit to Fresh & Fish Market in Cascais, with Inês and Portuguese volunteers Maria José, António and Francisco Silva.

 

An optional tour by car with Portuguese hosts Luz and Carlos Calado, volunteers Maria José and António Vieira, Arminda and Júlio Varela, was planned for Sunday and our Finnish guests did not wanted to miss the opportunity to visit the town of Mafra, where a massive complex built in the 18th century with its Palace, a monastery, an impressive library awaited us. The Palace has something like 1200 rooms and the magnificent library hosts almost 40.000 old books. How is it possible to maintain in good conditions all of these books in an open library? Naturally by special bookkeepers. A colony of bats living outside the Palace has “special permission” to get inside through small holes and they eat all bugs that could damage the books – really incredible! There is also a large park with wild animals, but we had to skip this part, as the time was not enough for everything. Luckily there was a wild bird demo show going on inside the yard of the Palace and we could watch some eagles, falcons and owls.

From Mafra we went to Sobreiro, a replica of a Portuguese traditional village where we also had a very typical Portuguese meal, named “Cozido à portuguesa”. For a perfect ending we moved to Ericeira, a fishermen village also known for its colorful houses, magnificent ocean views and a charming atmosphere, making it an interesting holiday destination.

 

Monday was dedicated to Finnish gastronomy, cooked and prepared for the group at CC Rosário and Tuesday was a big day: preparation of Easter event in the morning and Easter event in the afternoon, where hundreds of user members from the three centers run by Junta de Freguesia met together at CC Rosario for celebration party, with music, dance, and, of course, food, drinks and cakes. The Finnish volunteers prepared a lottery, through which they offered to Portuguese seniors some handicrafts and souvenirs from Finland. The team got larger with Nadia Augusto from Vida+Viva.

 

Following day, Wednesday, started with a visit to the typical weekly “Gipsy market” in Cascais, with its myriad of noisy vendors announcing cheap clothes and others utilities. Besides Maria José and António, Portuguese volunteer, Julia Barria, joined the group for this visit.

Then we started a cultural visit tour in town guided by Carlos in the morning and by Inês in the afternoon. Our lunch had place in a small restaurant. The group visited museums and historical buildings celebrating the 650th anniversary of Cascais. In between, we stopped at the Junta de Freguesia Cascais-Estoril for a surprise visit to President Pedro Morais Soares and other Officers. He made us a short tour of the building and came outside for a group photo.

 

Back to real work on Thursday, with activities for disabled persons at CRID Alcaide. This acronym stands for Center for Rehabilitation and Integration of Disabled and hosts people from all ages. Strong interaction of the volunteers with the residents, in such a way that the volunteers have decided to return next Monday morning after Easter week-end to finish four “puppets” they were building. Each one of the four funny puppets received a mixed Finnish/Portuguese name and two of them travelled to Kuusankoski with the volunteers.

 

Free time for the volunteers during the weekend, certainly dedicated to visit beautiful Sintra and Cabo da Roca – western point of continental Europe with Nadia and we met again on Sunday afternoon to attend a popular concert at Janes, a small village in the county, located at the base of the mountain, invited by volunteer Arminda Varela, neighbor in Janes. It was an entertaining performance by the marching band of Sociedade Filarmónica Janes-Malveira, a mix of young and adult musicians, both males and females.

 

Monday afternoon we had a visit to a Service Center of Misericordia Lisboa in Cascais where we interacted with residents playing games and having tea and cakes we have baked.

 

Tuesday was again a day for a short travel to Nature Park, in the area of Cresmina-Guincho, a beautiful wild beach landscape plenty of smooth dunes sculpted by the strong winds, for environment cleaning while hiking. We had lunch at CC Areia, where we have done some pieces with clay, guided by the regular instructor who gives weekly lessons to member users of Junta de Freguesia. This Center is shared with CRID, an organization that supports disabled persons.

 

Following day we stayed in the town center for a completely different activity, consisting of cleaning and painting undesired graffiti from the public walls, supported by Junta’s staff, Inês and Nadia.

 

Thursday we had a full day cultural visit to Lisboa, with the company of Nadia, partly with a professional guided tour and pertly by ourselves.

Weekend was getting closer, but Friday was still to come with surprises. We baked cakes for our entertainment visit to CC Poço Novo, just around the corner. Poço Novo is the smallest and oldest center run by Junta de Freguesia Cascais-Estoril, located in the old town center. As an aperitif for the evening we have been singing with the users, and we listened some fados, traditional Portuguese song, World Heritage. Our day finished at a local Fado Restaurant where we had the chance to listen professional Fado singers.

 

After the weekend on their own, Finnish volunteers came prepared for the last two days, spent at CC Rosário, cleaning and gardening adjacent kids playground and at a farewell party with all the people involved, including CC Rosário staff, Vida+Viva members, Finnish and Portuguese volunteers, hosted by President Pedro Morais Soares and Junta’s Officers.

 

Text by Carlos Calado