Programme & action: ERASMUS+, Key Action 1: Youth Exchange
Venue: Arrouquelas, Portugal
YE dates: 5-15 August 2017
APV dates: 7-9 July 2017
Participants: Kateřina Mrůzková, Adam Gaura, Petr Kadlec, Michal Gaura
Group leader: Jaroslav Bílek
Participating countries: Czech Republic, Portugal, Armenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Lithuania, Macedonia, Ukraine
Please read the info-pack
Hosting organisation: H20
Project report:
To the small village Arrouquelas left from Prague Airport group of 5 Czech participants- Katka – girl from Silesia, who has never flown before, Petr from Prague, brothers Adam – expert for projects and younger Michal who took part in the similar adventure for the first time and me, 25 years old student, who should pay attention that everything goes well. In this group we left for our 10 days adventure to the land of football, cork and good wine.
After one night in Lisbon we finally met other participants of this project- guys from Armenia, Bosnia, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Lithuania, Macedonia, Portugal, Ukraine and around 10 people who spend their time in this village as EVS (European Voluntary Service). In general there were almost 70 participants which means huge pressure for organizers- especially Alex, who was a Big Boss of this project. In the EVS people were also 2 girls from Brno- Alča&Denča so in the end we were the most powerful group.
The main aim of this project was to share diversity and stop radicalism. For this reason were the selected countries perfect- it was a mixture of different approaches to EU, Russia and current world problems. The way how to achieve this were through lot of sport and cooperation activities. The first day we took part of not so many name games which was little bit shame because the first days we had quite hard time to call the people by names. The following activity was city or let me rather call it village game. Thanks to Alča&Denča we had a blast. We saw every hidden corner and found out many new information and fact about this place. Every evening after dinner one country presented their country and culture and according to reactions of others, Czech night was one of the better ones. Another days we were making video against radicalism, did yoga in the park, had excursion in Lisbon for a sport day, attended presentation with a leader of Portugal Olympic Agency and last but not least visited city Nazare where we did a Flash Mob which surprised many tourists and local people.
On the other hand every project has also some cons. Here I would like to mention mainly conflict in Ukrainian team, which ended in sending home one participant two days before the project end and maybe not so many activities which would show the current issues in topic of radicalism.
In general I think that Czech group did very good job and we will be invited for the next project to Arrouquelas again. For this I would recommend it to the people who start their Erasmus+ career because you will not be forced to be so active and will have lot of time to meet and speak with many different people and build your friendships. For those, who would like to gain little bit more to the future I would recommend you to search for something little bit more challenging.
Thank you EYCB & European Commission for this opportunity, but mainly:
Obrigado Portugal por tudo!!!
Liberec August 22th 2017
Jaroslav Bílek
