Programme & action: Youth in Action programme, action 3.1.2. training course
Venue: Baku, Azerbaijan
Dates: 25 April – 4 May 2014
Participants: Lucie Bartoňková, Petra Grossmannová
Hosting organisation: DYPU – Democratic Youth Public Union
Project info:
Project Value of Difference took place in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan. Communication with organisators before arriving there, was really nice and without any troubles and after my landing in Baku, I got pick up at the airport even when it was 4 in the morning.
But the rest of project (organising part) was till end full of troubles. First weird thing I find out was that from 20 participants there was just one guy and rest of girls. After few days we were told that it was for purpose. Every day when was international evening of participating countries, came a lot of strangers, just men and they were hitting on girls and something getting ridiculously drunk. I must say it was big cons.
Also after few days I had some healthy troubles so it was necessary to go to hospital. And during our staying there was just one guy from organization team, so I asked him to go with me to help with translating. I must say he was really angry to go with me to hospital and it felt really bad to me.
Another weird think was that organisators weren’t with us almost at all. I saw them just during internationals evening. So always when some troubles appeared it was hard to solve them. Also most of the participants were speaking Russian to each other, so many times I was out of conversation because of this language barrier and other participants didn’t want to speak English, because their Russian was on higher lever and they felt more comfortable to speak that language.
But what I really like about organisators, we got reimbursing of travelling cost in cash during last day. I must say I really appreciate that.
Training part of our project was simply great. Our trainer, French guy called Benoit Mida-Briot, was enthusiastic, friendly and funny person. His training gave me a lot of knowledge about intercultural communication, diversity in our society, NGOs and we even tried to write our own YiA project. I really enjoyed his way of teaching and his open minded personality.
In conclusion I would like to say that this project was really weak on organisation part and organisations should not do any other project if they don’t like to work with youth (and it seems they don’t), but on the other hand training was thanks to Benoit really great experience which gave me a lot of new knowledge.
Lucie Bartoňková
