Hi everyone. Hello again.
My name is Ivett, and I’m from Hungary. I am a former DI and a former Climate Activist student. I completed three programs at CICD – starting with the Gaia Program in January 2023, going to the Poverty Activist program in August 2023, and finishing with the Climate Activist program in June 2025.
When it all started….
But my journey with CICD didn’t start in 2023. It actually started in 2018, when I first applied for the Gaia Scholarship. At that time, earning money felt more urgent than what I really wanted to do, so unfortunately my plans at CICD had to take the back seat.
Arriving five years after that first application felt, in some ways, like I was late. But looking back, I wasn’t late, I was preparing myself. Those five years taught me lessons I needed in order to fully arrive when I finally did.
I believe everyone gets here when they are meant to. But you do have to intentionally put yourself on the path. And you have to be ready when you arrive.
My first months in the Gaia team
The Gaia Program was more than a way to collect my course fees. It was already part of the learning.
Staying somewhere for six months, doing your tasks so you can reach a goal you deeply want, while watching others come and go – that requires mental strength. Learning to live in a community, sometimes with people you don’t necessarily like or enjoy spending time with, cooking together, cleaning together – teaches you more than you expect. And it teaches you things you will absolutely need later on your projects. And in life.
Development work is not a fairy tale. Not even close. You don’t work only with people you love. You are not smiling and laughing all the time. The Gaia Program is a powerful training for this reality. Doing things you don’t really feel like doing, with people you don’t always agree with, for a common goal. It’s definitely a great preparation.
Everything in life teaches you something
But here, the lessons keep coming, whether you have processed the previous ones or not.
Being in CICD is not easy. But it is the intentional hard we chose. Even if we forget that sometimes. People come here for different reasons, but the goal should always be sustainable development. We may disagree on the methods; we may see things differently – but we owe it to each other, and most importantly – to the communities we work with – to keep that shared goal in focus.
CICD didn’t give me one dramatic life changing revelation. It gave me many small ones. The kind that quietly rearranges how you view the world.
Learning about the Why
During my training as a DI and as a Climate Activist, we didn’t just learn about the current state of the world. We also learned how we got here. It is just as necessary to understand why the world looks the way it does as it is to know where we stand in it.
Although I could never reach the end of my ‘Why’s, because that is literally impossible, the lessons I have learned shaped me in ways I did not expect. They changed how I see the world so deeply that returning to socially acceptable norms many times felt uncomfortable.
When your eyes start to open, it becomes incredibly difficult to shut them again. To not just stare and scream that the world is on fire.
CICD drops you in the deep end, but also teaches you that you can swim.
All of this training, all of these lessons, will help you grow. You might hate it sometimes. You might cry sometimes. But all of these moments are necessary part of the work you chose to dedicate yourself to.
None of this is easy…..
….and no one is telling anyone it is. But in my opinion, it’s worth it. So much.
Every single person who you meet, is going to teach you something valuable, even if you never speak to each other again. Even if that one lesson was the only interaction you will ever have.
CICD is an opportunity. An opportunity to grow, to learn, to observe, to create, to grow your ideas into plans. Your intentions into actions.
Going to the projects feels like a chapter is ending, and the biggest one is just starting. All the preparation, all that time that you have spent getting ready, will only truly make sense once you are there. And even then, it might take some time. Realisations will come late, sometimes subtle, but they will quietly make themselves clear when you least expect it.
The privilege of being welcomed into the community
Working with the locals, being welcomed into their community, being someone they care for, someone they pay attention to, is a feeling I still can’t find the words for. It’s a privilege. It’s a gift. And not from you to them, but the other way around.
Realising that is crucial. You are not going there to save the world or to give lectures. You are going to share knowledge, back and forth.
I had the privilege to spend time both in Malawi and in St. Vincent. The experience is difficult to sum up – like trying to compress a full decade into a few sentences. Even though it was only a couple of months, it felt like a lifetime. And at the same time, far too short.
As cliché as it may sound, it completely changed my life. Not in a loud, dramatic way. Not in an “everything turned upside down overnight” way. But in the quiet way – where even if you would want to go back to who you were before, you simply couldn’t. You wouldn’t recognise that version of you anymore.
To work for change, changes you as well
Only recently did I fully realise how much I have truly changed. My priorities. My goals. My approach. My intentions.
And this is where all the preparation made sense. The discipline of the Gaia program.
The uncomfortable discussions during the DI training. My questions that were often answered with another question. The ‘Yes AND No’ from the teachers. The intentional difficulty. Without those, I would have arrived with the wrong mindset.
You are not here to be perfect. You are here to be responsible. You are here to be wrong – and learn that it’s okay.
CICD does not hand you ready-made answers. It shapes how you ask questions. How you sit with them. It challenges your comfort. It humbles you. And if you allow it to, it prepares you not just to go somewhere – but to truly arrive.
And once you arrive like that, you will not leave the same.
Maybe that’s the point.
