World Renew Staff Member Goes to the Games

On August 5, the world’s attention was on Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. While people across the globe tuned into their televisions to watch the Olympic torch be lit, one World Renew employee was watching from the heart of athlete’s village. Melody Mendonça, Advocacy Manager (Good Soil Campaign) with World Renew, spent August 1-15 in Brazil — not as a competitor or a spectator, but as a volunteer with the summer Olympic Games.

“It was a very interesting way of interacting with and meeting Brazilians and interacting with their culture,” said Mendonça.

She worked as an assistant with the National Olympic Committee (NOC), which assigns volunteers to each country’s team of contestants to help oversee administration, logistics, transportation, and other details, allowing athletes to focus on their sports. She was assigned to work with the four-person delegation from São Tomé and Príncipe, a small island country off of equatorial West Africa.

While the Olympic Games run from August 5-20, Mendonça arrived early to receive training, pick up her uniform, and to welcome ‘her’ team when they arrived. Through a friend, she arranged to stay with a Brazilian host family, a couple in their 30s, with a young daughter.

“They were just so hospitable and so generous,” said Mendonça. “They picked me up from the airport, and if I needed a ride to any of my volunteer shifts, they would offer to do that….They didn’t see me as a paying guest; they saw me as a visitor in their house.”

Transportation was a challenge, she admitted. It usually took her about an hour by transit to get to the Olympic village for her shift. “Every day it changed. I think they were kind of figuring it out as the Games went along,” Mendonça laughed. “But it was so good that you were kind of doing it with everyone else. That’s actually where you got talking to the most number of people. Every time I took the transit I made a new friend because everyone is just as confused and lost as you and we’re going to the same destination.”

One highlight was watching the opening ceremonies on a big screen in the athlete’s village with other volunteers. “It was really beautiful to watch… You just felt like congratulating this country for pulling it all off despite all the criticisms that they faced, to stand strong in the face of all the discouragement.”

In addition to helping ‘her’ delegation, she was able to see a lot of events. Her favourites, she said, were volleyball, beach volleyball, and handball. She saw Michael Phelps swim, and watched one of the São Tomé and Príncipe athletes race. “Just to be in the Olympic stadium… that was really beautiful – just to see it,” she said.

Mendonça had also volunteered in 2015 for the PanAm Games, held in Toronto. At those games, she was assigned to the Cuba delegation. She said that while she doesn’t consider herself a ‘sports person’, she enjoys volunteering at events in Toronto and having the opportunity to act as an ambassador for the city. When the opportunity came up, she applied as a volunteer and then applied again for this Olympic opportunity.

Many NOC volunteers go from games to games, said Mendonça, and she can see why. She saw many familiar faces from the PanAm Games volunteering again at the Olympic Games. “It becomes an addiction,” she joked. “They encouraged me to consider coming to Seoul, South Korea for the Winter Olympics… It’s like your friends inviting you to come visit them. You can never say, because it’s just so far off, but I keep an open mind. It truly is a really nice experience in terms of what people are celebrating and why.”