ERASMUS+, Key Action 1: training course
Training course 17—25 June 2023
Venue: Arcuș, (5km from Sfantu Gheorghe), Romania
National team: Linh Nhi Vu, Martin Zeman, Alice Sklenářová, Gabriela Zelenková
Please read the info-pack.
Hosting organisation: InnoEdu (Association for Innovation in Adult Education)
Project report:
I always make sure to double-check that I haven’t forgotten anything before I leave, especially when leaving for the mountains. But to be honest, I am glad that this time around I failed to pack my charger, because there is nothing that screams cultural experience more than using three different languages while trying to buy an iPhone cable at a Romanian train station. It was Saturday, the 17th of June 2023 and all four members of the Czech team were ready to catch our train to Sfantu Gheorghe and start our training course.
Eager to learn more about sustainability practices in youth work we were first acquainted with our organizers, who would become our guides for the following week. Then it was time to meet all of the 21 participants, who represented the 5 remaining nationalities taking part in the course.
While we each might have been brought to Romania by very different paths (literally and figuratively) we all shared a goal of becoming more eco-friendly in both our daily lives and our lives as youth workers. Everyone was eager to share their ideas of how to implement what our lecturers taught us. Even the opportunity to show others our own creative ideas through workshops arose. From teachers through professionals all the way to students everyone took part in the processes of non-formal and informal learning.
For me, however, being shown around Transylvania was the absolute highlight of the course.
We visited the town of Sfantu Gheorghe, its forest and dumpster, which was very much on topic for this project. No trip to Romania would have been without visiting Dracula, or more so his castle and the nearby city of Brasov, which welcomed us on brand – with a thunderstorm.
All good things come to an end and so did our training course. We left the village of Arcus on
the 25th of June. Sad, yet full of new knowledge and with hopes to see everyone we’ve met once again, maybe in Romania, maybe in Czechia or perhaps somewhere else around this world that we’ve all pledged to try and make a better place.
Alice Sklenářová
