Youth Exchange, Cascais, Portugal 9-17 May 2017
By Dimitra Stampouli
Being the first time to attend a Youth Exchange, it was a really unique experience that I will remember dearly. As the name suggests, Youth Exchanges are about sharing experiences.
In order to get selected for this program you had to fill in an application that was available in the training calendar of Inter Alia. Along with the application form you could find the information pack of the program. There you could find all the information you might want or need to know beforehand.
After applying, you get an email saying that they received your application and that you will get notified after the process is over. Getting the acceptance email is always a joyous moment! Booking the tickets, getting ready for the intercultural night and getting to know the other participants are part of the fun experience.
After a few weeks of preparations, I finally arrived in Cascais. The first day was really fun. We played games in order to get to know each other, since there were people from 6 different countries.
During the program we talked about human rights, we discussed the current situation of migration in our countries, played games, tried to define hate speech and how we can prevent it, developed our creative skills by drawing and shared our personal experiences and views about migration and otherness. We also had lots of free time to reflect about the progress we were making during the program.
Saying goodbye to the other participants was one of the hardest things we had to face, since we were living together for 8 days, sharing our personal views and experiences.
I would definitely recommend attending a project like this one! If you are passionate about meeting people, multicultural societies, traveling then you have to experience it yourself!
boneva@interaliaproject.com
