Programme & action: ERASMUS+, Key Action 1: Youth exchange
Venue: Bédeille, France
Youth Exchange Dates: 12-22 June 2019
APV Dates: 10-13 May 2019
Participants: Iva Černá, Wiktoria Kowalczyková, Daniel Branný, Alžběta Schulzová
Group leader: Lukáš Peluněk
Please read the info-pack & project summary
Hosting organisation: SolAfrika
Participating countries: Czech Republic, Italy, Spain, Cyprus and France
Project report:
Project Journey To The Identitites was located in the southern France in the region called Ariége. Theoretically it was close to the Toulouse but practically it was in the middle of nowhere. Our venue was cute cosy place which is also a house of the hosting organisation Sol Africa.
We were 5 countries – 25 happy active participants from Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Czech Republic and France.
The community life of our group contained sharing responsibilities like clening, washing the dishes and so on. We ate mostly organic food because this is also a philosophy of the organisation. The cherry on the top of the cake were the dry toillettes!
About the program I have to say it was quite intense for us and on the other side I have to say we enjoyed it a lot. From the first day we started to discover the 50 shades of identity. We discussed stuffs like gender, attraction, biological sex and what else is under this umbrella of Queer. Another big package of activities were delivered by Cypriot- Italian duo who did with us a lot of excercises about making a connection in a group and about the trust. We all loved perform the theatre of oppressed.It is a theatre technique using for promoting social and political change. We did a lot of image and forum theatre as a tool to promote issues as homophobia, transgendering, violence. Interesting game was the Step up game. We all got some roles and we were supposed to imagine ourself in this situation, with this background and this position in society. The roles mainly contain people with social disadvantages, ethnic minorities, immigrants etc.
A lovely day we had during the awareness day when we attended the festival for teenagers and we prepare for them the art-graffiti workshop and theatre workshop. Even the language barrier was present we all had fun together.
During the evenings we shared our different cultures, cook national food, play music and we organized a poetry night where we were reading poems not only in the English but also in all our different languages.
All 10 days we had a great atmosphere and we really created a safe environment where everybody felt safe to express and welcomed. The memory of the last night is one of my favourites one. We went to the town for the local music festival and dance out till we finally had to say goodbye.
Bedeille is simply a place where the magic happens and I would recommend everyone to come for one of their project.
Alžběta Schulzová
