Would you like to listen to a story?

Every night, between 8pm and 10pm, the children and young people in the paediatric unit of the Hospital de São João receive special visitors: volunteers from Nuvem Vitória who tell them bedtime stories. ‘Do the nurses also get a story today?’ jokingly asks a nurse to a team of eight volunteers who have just arrived and whom Agenda Porto accompanied. Among them is Isabel Mendes, who has been a volunteer for six years with this association that operates in 11 hospitals across the country, and which began its activity in Porto in 2017.

Isabel travelled about an hour from Paços de Ferreira to come and tell stories. A psychologist by training, she has worked for that municipality for 38 years, where she is responsible for the library's Education Service. It was ‘on a very foggy professional day’ that she opened her email box and read a message from a friend challenging her to join the association as a volunteer. ‘I was keen to volunteer, and I'd already had other offers to collaborate with other organisations, but I'd never felt the call,’ she says. When she read the project description, she decided to sign up. ‘I didn't hesitate, I went for it.’ After training, her first action, she recalls, was on 16 April 2018. When she started there were around 60 volunteers at ‘Joãozinho’ [paediatric unit]. Today there are 135.

In this volunteer project, the storytellers are scheduled according to their monthly availability, and work in pairs formed randomly by the internal platform. Each night, eight volunteers tour the surgery, burns and oncology units spread over the two floors of São João's paediatric ward; the pairs start at each end. Before they start their rounds, a briefing is held with the nurses on duty to find out about each patient's condition and assess the type of approach; they learn whether or not they should enter the wards (for example, if a child has just come out of chemotherapy treatment) or if there are situations that require them to dress up. ‘Let's dress up before I tell you a story,’ they joke with a little girl in isolation, who smiles.

Some children are already familiar with ‘the clouds’ and are anxiously awaiting their arrival. Some stand guard at the bedroom door waiting for their turn to hear a story. This is the case of eight-year-old Martim, who welcomes us with a mischievous smile. ‘If all goes well, I'll finish the antibiotic on Tuesday and leave on Wednesday,’ he tells us cheerfully.

Before interacting with the children, the pairs always ask the accompanying adults for permission, but Martim doesn't even wait for his mother's answer and promptly says ‘yes’. However, he has a special request: he doesn't want to hear stories, he wants to be told jokes. Margarida Soares, coordinator of Nuvem Vitória's Porto team, tells him some jokes and riddles with the help of a book she carries in her bag.

Her passion for storytelling and children's literature (which, she says, "is for everyone") led her to venture into writing. ‘The boy who wanted to catch the clouds’ is the title of her book. We asked her what volunteering means to her. "It means giving my time, and feeling that I always get more out of it than I give. I thought I didn't have time for anything, but it turns out that I do," she says. ‘I'm in the right place to do voluntary work."

Hands are for sharing

Sharing is one of Isabel Natário's mottos. A kindergarten teacher at Agrupamento de Escolas Diogo de Macedo, in Gaia, she manages to find time to embrace various projects and causes. Helping others is, she says, ‘a very good addiction’. One of the projects she has been part of for three years is Coração na Rua, a solidarity association whose mission is to ‘make Porto's nights warmer, raise awareness and help those in need’.

We met Isabel at a street she knows well: Gonçalo Cristóvão is one of the places where this association provides support to people in vulnerable situations. Every fortnight on Saturdays, starting at 7.30pm, a group of volunteers offer a hot meal, food and other basic necessities to those most in need.

Volunteering came into her life almost three decades ago when she started collaborating with the EMAUS Movement. ‘I started sympathising with the causes,’ she says. At EMAUS, she came to be known as "a senhora das rabanadas" [‘the French toast lady’]. At Christmas, she would make around a hundred French toasts so that the institution's users could have this delicacy on their Christmas table. This is ‘a tradition’ that she has endeavoured to maintain over the years, and every Christmas she continues to make French toasts for the users of EMAUS and now also for the users of Coração na Rua.

‘Helping is easy’

Isabel opens the trunk, which is full of clothes and shoes that will soon have new owners. ‘These clothes come from everywhere, from colleagues who work with me at school,’ she says. The baby and children's clothes will be donated to Lar Luísa Canavarro - Comunidade de Inserção, an educational institution that takes in teenagers and young pregnant women or mothers with their children in vulnerable situations. Through pass-the-word, this volunteer says she manages to mobilise a large number of people to support her causes, creating real chains of mutual help. ‘The funniest thing is that it creates such a special network, helping is easy,’ she says.

As well as social causes, Isabel also embraces environmental ones. As a kindergarten teacher, she works with children on issues related to nature conservation, and ended up taking an interest in the priolo, a bird endemic to the Azores, which was once at risk of extinction. Through various initiatives with her pupils, she has contributed to the campaign to preserve this small bird, but also the blue shark, an endangered species which, thanks to various actions, is no longer served in Gaia school canteens. ‘This is what we have to sow in the little ones,’ she emphasises.

‘We're just ‘a drop in the ocean’, but a drop with another drop and another drop makes a tide pool where biodiversity is possible (...) and we really start to change things,’ she says. ‘The important thing is to care about others and not just be distressed by the bad things that happen. We can try to do something so that things really change; it may be a small thing, but it can make a difference,’ she says.

‘When it comes to rehearsal day, I'm always worried about being on time,’ admits Emílio. ‘I'm taking it seriously, but I haven't been able to keep up with them. I don't have theatre training; I have street training,’ he says. ‘I'll say it all in two words: theatre and this company have changed my life. Because of Apuro, I'm a different human being; for example, I wouldn't give up my seat to anyone on the bus or metro, and today I'm the first to do so, thanks to what I've learned as a human being here at the theatre.’

With several shows under his belt, he is keen to point out the changes the theatre has brought them: ‘When this project started, hardly anyone worked. Today, I'm the only crook here, the others are training or working,’ he says with a sly smile. Everyone laughs. ‘The important thing here is that their self-esteem is all up, practically all of them are working or training,’ he emphasises.

Vilma, who has also been with the group since its initial formation, agrees: ‘Theatre has raised my self-esteem, and thanks to theatre I can say that I got a job, because I was a very shy person, and it's a way of expressing myself. I was ashamed of myself and of exposing myself at a job interview.’

Maria Alice, one of the most recent members, emphasises the creation of ‘bonds of friendship and affection’. ‘I'm recovering from a psychological situation, but I feel the strength to find a different path; I'm enjoying learning techniques that help me get to know myself and structure myself as a person.’

Joana, 25, the youngest member, says she has always been ‘very ashamed’. ‘In ‘Do Lado de Fora’ I'm not ashamed to be me and I think that's the starting point to be something else, to do theatre, which I've always wanted to do,’ she says.

Integration through art

Culture and solidarity ‘have always been at the core’ of Apuro, an association that ‘emerged during the crisis of 2009, although it only began operating in 2013, with the aim of supporting intermittent performers,’ says Rui Spranger. Since then, it has been working with homeless people through its participation in the ‘Voices of Silence’ platform and in ‘Axis 4 - Participation and Citizenship’ of the Homeless Planning and Intervention Centres (NPISA) in Porto.

It could be said that the genesis of ‘Do Lado de Fora’ was the SOmOS project, run by Porto City Council as part of the AIIA programme - Integrated Approaches for Active Inclusion, aimed at the homeless population and people in situations of social vulnerability, which was artistically coordinated by Apuro. The project consisted of three artistic creation workshops, each lasting four months, involving the Saber Compreender and PELE associations. These workshops resulted in a final show, entitled ‘É!’, which premiered successfully in June 2022 at Teatro Campo Alegre, and which gave rise six months later to the ‘Do Lado de Fora’ theatre group.

It was ‘a biodrama and documentary theatre show,’ says Spranger. ‘We were interested in working on the dreams of childhood and the dreams of now, we were interested in the positive and negative sides of social assistance; it's a show about fighting stigma and a show about humanisation,’ he says. He continues: ‘Here, we have the concept of working outwards and working inwards. Now we're working inwards, from this perspective in which we have a greater artistic challenge with this show, in which we're working on physical theatre and clown.’

‘Do Lado de Fora’ is a collective open to everyone. ‘Anyone can join,’ emphasises the artistic director. This was the case with Tiago Ribeiro, a young actor and director who participates voluntarily in the group, having even challenged some members to take part in the show ‘Isto não é um show’, by the cultural association Formiga no Casulo, which was on stage in November at the Helena Sá e Costa Theatre. 

As a newcomer to ‘Do Lado de Fora’, Tiago says he ‘felt I had a lot to learn from them, more to learn than to teach’. ‘I had the theatre side and lacked a bit of life, and these people have that. What happens on stage is just the translation of all the years they have behind them,’ he says.  

Maria Alice takes the opportunity to say that, for her, theatre ‘works a lot like therapy, although she has professional help’, pointing out that the work Tiago has done with the group has been ‘very therapeutic’.

The premiere of the next show is scheduled for 20 February, at Teatro Campo Alegre, and has the support of Porto City Council and the Bonfim Parish Council.

‘‘Do Lado de Fora’ comes from a desire of ours. We've been working for over a year without funding, which only came this year, so there's a lot of voluntary labour,’ says the artistic director. ‘We're at risk of not having funding from March next year, but we'll keep working. There's a will to continue regardless of the conditions.’