I realized that I had never properly told you about my experience at Rio Olympics and how my daily life as a language services volunteer had looked like. I wrote here about the road to become Olympic volunteer and about the costs and benefits, but never about the actual work and daily routine. So let’s change it! I was lucky to get into the area of language services and I was even luckier when the venue assigned to me was my preferred venue of artistic gymnastics! During a skype call months before the games we were told, that we could write an email and name our preferred venues. That would obviously not guarantee getting these venues, but they said they would try to allocate us according to our preferences. In my case that worked perfectly! Continue reading “My first Olympic experience – volunteering at Rio 2016” →

First question I get asked when talking about volunteering for the Olympics is whether they pay for flight tickets and accommodation? The answer is unfortunately no. (Though for me it was only partly “no”, but I will talk about it later). In general you have to arrange your flight and accommodation yourself, which I agree, is very discouraging. But don’t close this page yet! I will try to convince you that it is still doable and worth it 😉

Continue reading “Volunteering for the Olympics: costs and benefits” →

Olympic games and many other sport events can not be held without volunteers. In Rio in 2016 there were around 50.000 (!) volunteers and for the winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang more than 20.000 volunteers are required.  Being a volunteer at such event is a life time experience and if you love sport, international community and volunteering, you should definitely try!

The application period starts very early (around 2 years in advance) and closes around 1,5 year before the games. I applied in November 2014 to volunteer in Rio in August 2016. The first step in the application process is rather easy: you need to fill out online form with basic questions about yourself and your motivation (you don’t have to write an essay, there are only couple of lines required – but be sure you try your best in expressing your genuine interest in volunteering).

Continue reading “How to volunteer for the Olympic Games?” →