ERASMUS+, Key action 1: training course
Venue: Arrouquelas, Rio Maior, Portugal
Dates: 2—10 November 2023
Czech team: 3 participants
Please read the info-pack.
Hosting organisation: H2O
Project report:
Olá! Welcome to Portugal! Welcome to the world full of happy people, who care about others. World of fun, friendship, honesty, and passion for fighting against hate speech. It was my pleasure to travel to Portugal (Rio Maior) with two other Czech people on the 2nd November. We were really excited about the project “Don’t hate” that ended on the 10th November. There were 13 countries together to discuss about hate speech and to increase our cultural sensitivity: the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Serbia, Croatia, Portugal, Spain, Ukraine, Hungary, Estonia, Ireland, Germany.
Thanks to the perfect preparation and organization of our leaders – Alexandre Jacinto and his amazing H2O team and trainers Mara Arvai and Endre Kiss from Hungary we were able to create a wonderful team without any single mistake! During many icebreaking activities, we got to know each other better and better and thanks to many groupworks, we were able to cooperate quite easily. We were dealing, for example with problems about discrimination, social exclusion and online hate speech, problems of each country, possibilities of saving money, how we imagine the future world as well as with trying to find solutions for every task. Presentation of our results allowed us to practice English and move our level a little bit higher!
Moreover, we experienced quite a lot from other cultures. Our first evening we had one big cultural night, where all 13 countries presented typical dishes and cultural facts. We also had opportunity to present something about Czech Republic, prepare some traditional Czech dishes and danced traditional dances. For me it was such a beautiful experience to saw these cultures and tasted traditional food, especially the Portuguese one.
Considering it all in all, this training course had something special in itself. Everything was so calm and amazing. What is glorious is the cooperation between nations, realizing that the hate speech and discrimination can have many forms and still can be basically the same in some points and the most important thing is the fact that every individual can do something to make the situation better. During the project, we were nonformal educated about many methods which we can use in a future. We met many inspirative people and get inspired by them. We experienced to be in the shoes of a social excluded young person during the shadow theatre workshop. We tried to create our own workshop on hate speech and discrimination topic and discuss it with others. We also create campaign in our countries and present it. For all of us this was only the beginning. Now, when we are back home, we can try to realize our ideas and be happy if any of them will come true. We can start with creating a lot of beautiful things or we can use education as the most powerful weapon to change the world. Everything is up to us!
I am sure that I can thank you on behalf of the entire Czech team. Because without EYCB we wouldn’t have this opportunity. I am thankful that I met such and amazing human beings during this project and spent amazing time in Portugal. I fell in love with Portuguese food and get inspired by amazing people. Right now, I am so thankful for friends I found there.
Thank you EYCB.
Lucie B.
