Youth exchange "Reinvent yourself in Europe: Work, Value, Opportunity"

Youth exchange «Reinvent yourself in Europe: Work, Value, Opportunity» was focused on youth between 18 and 25 years old. This youth exchange took place in Poggiardo, Italy from 25-31 of October 2018. The exchange aimed to raise awareness of workplace problems, to increase youth creativity and entrepreneurship, to propose positive attitudes towards European mobility programs, to promote positive attitudes towards employees of other nationalities and to increase the European conscience in young people.

Here is a text from the Greek participation that summarizes the experience of this program:

“On Wednesday 25 October, we had the opportunity to travel to Italy for a week, in Poggiardo, a small village in the province of Lecce. In total, we were seven (with our team leader) to represent Greece and Youth Center of Epirus. In this program we meet other groups from Turkey, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Poland (42 participants). The " Reinvent yourself in Europe: Work, Value, Opportunity" program has concerned the employment and rights of European citizens in entrepreneurship, the different types of employment and the problems, young people may face in the future.

The program took place from 25 to 31 October in Poggiardo. On the first night, with our evening excursion, we also made our first contact with the participants from the other countries. The program managers were two very pleasant girls. Through the activities that took up most of our time in the day, we had the opportunity to know each other throughout the program, due to the games which are organized for that purpose. By participating in the activities, we learned what a spirit of cooperation means, we have come into deeper contact with the others, shared our dreams, our goals, our fears as well as the potential and concerns of each country, etc. During the evening each country had the opportunity to present internationals nights, an evening dedicated to the culture and customs of each country, through entertaining games and original of ideas. The Greek night included theatrical sketches, traditional dances, videos and games. It was really an incredible experience for each one of us, because we were connected with people of different culture, we learned about their own culture.

At first it was a strange feeling, completely new, but in the end we considering these people a great family. Everyone there played our own unique role, through our songs, our conversations, our relaxed walks, our night days and our big smiles, we managed to make a great experience.  We had some experienced before: "When it is time to leave you will see that you will cry and you will not want to." "Yeah well," we said but when it was time to leave, we really understood what they meant.”

ERASMUS+ 

This project was co-funded by European Union, the Erasmus+ Program