Programme and action: Youth in Action programme, action 3.1.2. training course
Venue: Aghveran, Armenia
Dates: 10-17 February 2014
Participant: Lucie Zágorová
Participating countries: Turkey, Croatia, Poland, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Finland, Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia
Project report:
The youth project with the name „Deeper and Wider – in the ICL world“ which was based mainly on intercultural comunication issue took place in the snowy Aghveran in the Armenian part of Caucasus. As I already went to Armenia in the summer 2012 and this year I was missing the proper winter in the Czech Republic, I decided to discover undiscovered places in Armenia also in winter!
The various program of the project was dealing with the topic of evalution of past events within the network of partners of the Armenian organization ICIRLD as for them the main criterion is the quality of mutual projects. That’s why around 15 representatives of different NGO’s gathered to analyze their common events and tried to discuss the possible ways of cooperation. The content of the workshops was extremely interesting for me as I’m a real fun of intercultural dialog and I feel that it’s really important even to get to know your own culture while discovering the differences between the others!
The social program was something we were really eager for after full days of workshops. As we were such a varied group, we didn’t have only one, but two intercultural evenings where we could discover food, drinks and curiosities of other countries! What was most impressing for me was the traditional Armenian dinner accompanied with performance of Caucasian dances – I was totally impressed! As I mentioned at the beginning, I wanted a proper winter, but at that time, Armenians were already welcoming spring! With the locals, we were jumping over a burning pile of dry grass in the snowy garden of the hotel which enabled me to feel the Armenian spirit even more!
All in all, I have to admit that this project was very successful because of two reasons. I met a loads of awesome people full of energy, experience and ideas which motivated me very much! During the last reflexion session we were asked to prepare a figure of a man on a floor with a cardboard and to stand in a place according to our feelings after the project. I was standing on two places on the head – first because of the gained knowledge and with the other foot, I was standing on mouth as I have to say with pleasure that we didn’t waste any second spent together and we shared many smiles and bursts of international laugh.
Lucie Zágorová
