Dr. Dietmar Eisenhammer, Senior Volunteer, Wiesbaden

To start with, let me state one thing: After having finished your professional life, senior volunteering is indispensable if you want to stay active and enterprising in this new phase of your life. Volunteering gives you energy for new undertakings and enables you to use and enlarge your experiences even in later life. It really is true: You’re never too old to learn something new.

Aged 66, I am the best example for this fact. After a fulfilling career, I said to myself: It’s not only the young people that are Europe’s future, but also the older ones. Use this chance and find a new field of activity

For the last five years, I’ve been abroad in Europe as a “Senior Volunteer”. I’m part of various cross-border and European committees as a counsellor and expert. The “Franco-German Seniors’ Network PAMINA” was founded by me. I was its president from 2007 to 2009, and am now active in the network as its vice-president.

All of this should be considered against the background of the six volunteering activities in Europe that I have participated in so far. For every theory needs practical experience. I am now theory and practice in one person.

As a volunteer, I was in Italy four times and once each in France and Germany. I did a broad range of different jobs.

During my first activity, I restored and painted doors, window shutters and banks in Tuscany (Italy). Then I helped a beekeeper with everything that needed to be done. Further jobs included kitchen chores, guest relations, running errands and helping in the agricultural domain. My responsibilities in Grenoble (France) where I spent my second stay were namely helping in the kitchen, cleaning the guest chambers as well as the common and working rooms, and finally helping with gardening.

The next three activities in Italy (close to Florence, in Rome and Catania) were physically very strenuous and challenging. My jobs mainly included construction, relocations, kitchen and cleaning chores. In Sicilian temperatures of 40 degrees, doing these tasks involved lots of sweating. We made walls out of heavy volcanic rocks, constructed a long security fence, covered a large terrace with concrete under very difficult conditions, built stairs from old railway sleepers, produced heating material from olive pomace and filled it into sacks. Additionally, there was lots of tidying and cleaning to do.

Finally, my German-French-Polish activity during the grape harvest in Minfeld (Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany) was also interesting.

All things considered, I did manifold jobs that required commitment, hard work and good health. It was just the right thing for me as I’m a very down-to-earth person close to nature who enjoys physical work.

I can sum up the experiences I made during my volunteering activities in Europe in six points

(1)   Senior Volunteering activities are a new creative and forward-looking phase in life after one’s career. If you don’t want to wither away, you should use this chance.

(2)   Volunteering doesn’t only make sense in your home country or town. The European dimension brings along intercultural components and fosters international understanding. Volunteering in foreign countries is a contribution to peacekeeping.

(3)   Volunteering activities should always be intergenerational. Cooperation of older and younger people is irreplaceable and possesses an anti-ageing effect that is very high and yet free of charge. But you should also stay in contact with your own generation.

(4)   When volunteering, seniors need to be able to compromise, adapt and be flexible. Senior “worrywarts” aren’t suited for volunteering activities.

(5)   When deciding about a volunteering activity, you need to check thoroughly what will be demanded of you and what are your own expectations and capabilities. If the demands and offers can’t be reconciled, you should refrain from volunteering. Else, you would risk bad surprises and disappointments.

(6)   If a senior fulfils the requirements for a volunteering activity, he or she will be generously rewarded and will return home a great deal richer in good experiences than before. You grow wings for new activities. That’s the greatest gift in this new phase of life.

Looking back, I can say that all my expectations were fulfilled in the six European volunteering activities I have done so far.

-          I made new experiences and learned to appreciate other cultures;

-          I made many new friends and widened my horizon;

-          I have become a happier and more satisfied person.

In this new phase of life, cooperation between older and younger people now is the most important element of all my further activities. This cooperation is irreplaceable and has a refreshing and constructive effect. I’m looking forward to everything I will experience as a “Senior Volunteer in Europe”.