Programme & action: Youth in Action programme, action 3.1. youth exchange
Dates: APV (advance planning visit): 1-3 September; Youth exchange activity dates: 8-16 September
Venue: Rustavi, Georgia
Participating countries: Georgia, Armenia, Turkey, Czech Republic
Participants: Karolína Kolaříková, Martin Grinvalský, Bohdana Andruškivová, Jitka Knapová, Robert Melicher, Veronika Kovacsová, Matuš Horčik
Project report:
Hello Georgia, the country of mountains and ancient churches! It was my pleasure to take part of the project about religion tolerance with 6 very nice Czech participants… Firstly, I would like to tell them thank you for everything once more! J
28 people from Armenia, Czech Republic, Georgia nad Turkey participated in the project (6 participants plus one group leader from each country). The APV training of group leaders preceded the project itself – already there I could find out the project will be amazing! The Georgian leaders where really helpful and well prepared. Ice breaking games where effective as well as morning energizing games full of funny movements and our laugh, we got to know each other quickly and became really good friends across different nationalities and religions!
The project was well prepared and filled with various activities. The first half of the project we had workshops about religions where we discussed together about the meaning of tolerance, the religions, developed the ideas how to raise tolerance in our countries, between youth etc. We also visited the capital city of Georgia – Tbilisi, where history and modernism are wedded. Tbilisi has very strong and special atmosphere and all of us fell in love with the city! The project about religion tolerance couldn’t be realized in better place… In the centre of Tbilisi you can find Orthodox and Catholic churches, synagogues and mosques which are very close to each other even they are built in the same street and they coexist together in peace. The participants were divided into 4 reflection groups of mixed nations and each of group was working on pictures and recording videos about the tolerance which should be spread on the internet, social networks etc. We learned to work with editing movie programmes and the last day we presented our results. The videos were recorded mostly in Tbilisi, we discussed with passers-by, visited holy places…it was great job, useful and we enjoyed it together a lot! Besides the tolerance activities we also played theatre about our national historical legends and every day we had culture evenings where we could share our culture with the others, we prepared national drinks and food, learned traditional dances and customs.
In the end I would like to thanks a lot the EYCB for the opportunity to join such a wonderful project! We gained not only amazing experience but also lots of very good friends! You see, the unofficial motto of the project was ‚I love all of you!‘ J We’ve got different religions but we love each other!
Karolína Kolaříková
