Meet our festival volunteer Eli!
While most of you are probably enjoying a well-deserved summer holiday, Amnesty is still fighting ‘The bad guys’! However, we can’t do it on our own. Luckily, we have a lot of great volunteers who help us out wherever they can. We did an interview with one of them, our festival volunteer Eli. Let’s meet Eli Berghuis!
Hi Eli, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
“Sure! Well I’m Eli, a third-year English language and culture student. I have been doing volunteer work all my life and have worked for a while as a recruit for charities. One day someone from the Amnesty International Student Group Groningen came to a lecture and then I decided to join this Student Group. I always stuck with them because there are wonderful people in this group and because I think the goal of Amnesty is very important! Last year I was even the chair of the Amnesty Student Group. So, I’m very much involved with Amnesty.
I have always liked asking people to sign a petition for an important case. So when I saw the post on the Instagram account @amnestystudentnl, asking students to sign up as a festival volunteer, I did it immediately. I had never been to a festival like Pinkpop, but what a wonderful atmosphere! The festival goers are very diverse as a group, so that was nice to see. It was therefore a very cool experience, so I am expecting at Lowlands it will be the same.”
With all your Amnesty experience, would you recommend people to commit to Amnesty? You can be honest!
“I would like to motivate everyone to do something for Amnesty. For example, registering with a student group is the ideal way to meet people with the same interests outside of your studies. In addition, you also get the feeling that you can actually make a difference with all the Amnesty activities. If you cannot do something all year round, flex volunteer, or in my case festival volunteer, is the ideal way to contribute and to meet new like-minded people.”
What would you do differently at Lowlands than you did at Pinkpop?
“Well… I really liked Pinkpop because you get to hear super fun stories from the people you speak with and you can actually commit yourself to changing someone’s life. I have noticed that you have to make your pitch shorter and shorter during the day. Then you continue to keep people’s attention. But I also did that at Pinkpop, so that is not necessarily different.”
Will we see you again at one of our other (student) events soon?
“Hell yes! Of course, I will also go to Lowlands on behalf of Amnesty to get more signatures for the petition. This year it’s for an LGBTI activist from Greece5 and that really matters to me. I will therefore ensure that even more festival goers can become acquainted with the work of Amnesty. And as soon as the Masterclasses6 start again, I definitely want to go there, because I always find it super interesting and I also meet people from outside my own city who are Amnesty-minded.”
Are you as driven as Eli and do you want to contribute to a world in which everyone can enjoy human rights? Take a look at our student website to see what you can do!
