Programme & action: ERASMUS+, Key Action 1: youth exchange
Venue: Sarata Monteoru, Buzau, Romania
Dates: 12-20 April 2016
Participants: Ondřej Holan, Zuzana Nerudová, Vojtěch Andrš, Aneta Neubauerová
Group leader: Dominik Prokop
Please read the info-pack & daily programme
Participating countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Slovakia, Spain and Romania.
Hosting organisation: Asociatia O.D.E.N. Nehoiu
Project report:
Generous European program Erasmus+ provide us 8-days non-formal education project focused on unemployment of youth people and possibility of self-promotion via video to get better position on labor market.
Reason why I applied on this project is that I am interested in digital technologies and unemployment in generall. This idea was very original and interesting and I was curious how the organizators will put this together and prepare some original program for us.
There were participant from 7 different counries – Czech Republic, Romaina, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Greek and Slovakia. After arrival to Buchurest and few hours in the center we were trasnfered to the hotel by parked bus. Hotel was in favorite spa area in Romania close to romanian mountains. Accomodation was very good and food was great during whole week. We intruduced ourself to each other, but as we were very tired we finished early first evening.
Second day we stared again with introducing, short energizer which was prepared every day by one of countries. Then we have short trip to village with small quests – get a picture with local, make a short movie and do photoes of place we like or don’t like. It was good opportunity to get know other participants in group.
Next days we focused mainly on unemployment. Every country has prepared presenation and study about current sutuation, problems and description how difficult is to find a job these days. As the Czech Republic has now very low unemployment it was interesting to see how is the situation on other labor markets especially for young people without any experience. All presentations were very well prepared and provide us useful information. I would like to also mention „fake“ inverview excercise we had in couples. Every person had to prepare himself as employee or employer try to offer/get job. It was greate to see how participants were handling this challange, and even if they did many mistakes it was very beneficial.
Every country prepared a video about streotypes in other countries. We have Spain and we enjoyed lot of fun during preparation. Also we were presented by greeks and I have to say, it was hilarious!
But main focus was on video creation. We splited into three groups to created a video related to CVs, Youthpass and promotion. In my group we had to days to prepare 4 CV videos, cut it, edit etc. It was quite difficult and were not able to finish everything, but we created very nice 3 videos. Not professional ones but still in decent quality. It was hard to organize whole group in such time pressure, but I think we did good job.
I would like to mention also intercultural evenings, which were amazing. We tasted lot of foreign food and drinks, listen to national specific songs and tried some regional dances. Then great barbacue prepared for us by organizators, with lot of delicious national romanian food. And visitited places : Muddy Vulcanos, geologically active area in beautiful nature and old Romanian monastery. Last day we spent in Buzau, where we visited regional television studio and met local TV stars, editors etc. We have some time to walk through the city, see town hall, local market (with delicious local products) and speak to local citizens. Golden dot was last dinner in local restaurant with amazing food and DJ, where we have opportunity to spent last moments with participants and organizers and say them goodbye.
What have we learned? We got knowledge how to imrove our position on labor market, present ourself in better way and use video as a strong self promoting tool. We had many games about team work, cooperation, trust, communication and other beneficial soft skills. We had also opportunity to meet new friends, see cultural differences and practice our language skills.
In the end I would to say big THANK YOU to the organizers from ODEN, and EYCB to have this great opportunity!
Dominik Prokop
