Volunteering at the Lake Aid Christmas Party was my first experience with the organisation.
When I moved to Annecy from Australia in 2018 I expected all the clichés of living in France: people riding bikes with baguettes in their baskets and chic girls donning adorable berets. What I wasn’t prepared for was the poverty I saw.
Traveling and seeing poverty can be confronting but living here and seeing it day in and day out on every other street corner was a different experience and one that I still struggle with.
While Australia certainly has its fair share of people doing it tough, many asylum seekers and refugees are processed offshore, so their experience is all but unseen in the community. At least, that has been my experience.
Back in Annecy, I found myself feeling overwhelmed by what I was seeing and all up, pretty useless to help. That’s when I came across Lake Aid on Facebook and the call-out for Christmas party volunteers.
Volunteer! Now that’s something I can do, I thought.
A few weeks later, there I was in a massive hall, festively decorated and buzzing with people (none of whom I knew).
I was quickly welcomed into the fold of volunteers and got started in my role as one of the face painters.
Between turning kids into tigers and fairies I tried to take in the scene around me.
There was something happening in every direction: craft, live music, games, kids dancing, parents laughing.
I was blown away by the sheer size of the event. The organisation, the energy and the countless hours put in by so many people to make it happen.
I got chatting with the volunteers around me who, unsurprisingly, turned out to be warm and welcoming.
Despite this, I have to admit to having felt like a fraud. My afternoon in this hall was little more than a cameo appearance. On the grand scale of things, I was doing nothing in comparison to the work put in by the movers and shakers behind this organisation.
Struggling to shake this feeling, I decided all I could do was focus on enjoying the moment.
Moments like the delight on a little boy’s face when he saw himself transformed into a red-nosed circus clown and the subsequent laughter from his sister and mum.
It was such as small thing, but it was nice to be part of that.
It was then that it kind of fell into place. It was these small interactions and connections that made up the big picture. Stuff like this was the whole reason we were here, right?
For me, it was a powerful reminder not to discredit the difference you can make and the impact even the smallest gestures can have on people around you. It’s certainly something I’m trying to keep in mind as we head into 2019.
I don’t think I could fully understand what an event like that meant for the families it was created for but I know it certainly meant a lot to me.
Thanks for letting me to be part of it.
Bio
Edwina is a freelance journalist from Brisbane, Australia currently living in Annecy on what she calls her “grown up gap year”. Edwina joined Lake Aid in an effort to connect with and contribute to the local community.
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