A trip that my future self will be thankful about
As the summer with all of our summer activities was rapidly ending and we were preparing for the new school year, a new project opportunity appeared on the horizon! This time it was a training course in Poland and not wanting to miss out on this amazing opportunity, I packed my bags and went on another Erasmus adventure!
After traveling through polish cities, which names I still cannot pronounce, I finally reached my destination – the town called Tuchola where I met an amazing group of teachers, youth workers and people wanting to make a change for the better in this chaotic world. This is also the place where I later discovered my love of polish cheesecake, but that is a separate story by itself…
The main topic of this event was not my gastronomical adventures, but the training course which was centered around the topic of SOLIDARITY. A subject of discussion which is of utmost importance in order to keep the people connected in order to go through these difficult and scary times of pandemic, war and economic turbulence.
The interesting things about how we engaged this topic is a characteristic of all Erasmus projects – the non-formal education part. This moment when, instead of monotonous lectures and debates, the discussions are incorporated in games that we play every day. And believe me, these games were not naïve at all. Whether it would be an indoor or outdoor game, a game where you need to engage your body or your mind, or even a simple card game… The facilitators had a way to make us aware of how sometimes we, and with that most of society, act and think in a not-so-solidary way even if we think that we are “the good people”. Even though we were just playing games, sometimes the discussions afterwards left me just speechless and shocked from the things that I learned about myself.
After a deep dive in our ideas of solidarity and being made to face our own hypocrisies, the second half of the project, was meant for another topic – creating projects. I was really happy for this opportunity because what good is being aware of society’s problems if you are not able to help better them…?
We learned about the many types of Erasmus youth work projects that exist and we were able to decide which were suited more for us as individuals or as people who are a part of different groups and organizations.
I was able to find people who had similar project ideas like mine and I am hoping that, after this beautiful beginning in Tuchola, we would be able to end the circle by creating and organizing a project of our own.
