This summer, life decided to put Torre Pellice on the map of visited places of 28 youngsters. The village was the center of happenings during the period of 13-22 July, where by means of workshops, activities and other forms
of informal education we managed to dive into every sub-theme of the main one – “Young people living with liquid frames”. All of us were given the precious opportunity to learn something new, to express ourselves, to speak up, to listen to other experiences and to bring our countries closer to each other.
Unlike every other beginning in life, this one was surprisingly well and we blame it on the friendliest people ever :). We had our shy moments of course, and God knows how much trouble we went through with the names, but we managed to solve it quite quickly with the help of the name games. Even though everyone was tired from their trip, we still wanted to spend time together and get to know one another because time flies. Regarding the serious part our schedule was pretty tight. We were starting our days off with energizers to give us the energy needed to accomplish everything planned. Day by day we were engaging ourselves in different activities, facing different challenges. Some of them were including other people, for example the Olympics which included children from Belorussia and Italy. We were divided in teams and played different water games. Also, one more serious activity was the Storytelling with Ibrahim and Shahin, people who came in Italy looking for freedom and a better life. Besides this, we played simulation games such as Engineers and Derdians and Building houses. Their main purpose was to bring the people closer together and provoke the communication between them. After each and every one of these activities we had discussions in which we shared our thoughts and feelings about the dynamics of the games. Now, it´s time for the fun part!!!
Our lovely hosts took us on trips like hiking in the mountains which included swimming in a wonderful
, natural pool. Sure, it took a long time to get there and sure, we were dead tired, but it was worth it and we will remember it for a long time. The other trip was to Torino. It was the first time to visit the city for most of us. We had a chance to do some sight-seeing and to visit places according to our taste. Our small group visited the museum of cinema – Mole Antonelliana. It was amazing and it left us speechless! We also visited a café on the square and tasted some delicious Italian cake and coffee. Of course, you don´t leave Italy without some shopping, so we spent some time and money to enrich our wardrobes :).
Apart of the tasty, world famous Italian dishes that we were enjoying every day, one of the evenings we got the chance to try Indian food. It was served in a place which hosts old people and we were invited as their guests. We would also like to mention the not only the Italians have good taste for food, but they also know their beverages! 😀

While we are writing this, we are surrounded with people who are preparing for our intercultural evening which will be also our goodbye party. So, with this article we would also like to thank the organizers for being great hosts, for their patience and understanding and for organizing a successful project. We learned so much and made close friendships.
We hope to see you all again in the future!

Written by Aleksandra and Ivana from Macedonia

The Exchange was brilliantly organized: the proposed activities were according to the subject of the reunion between Portuguese, Italian, Macedonian and Ukrainian people. One of the activities was particularly interesting to do, and even more to reflect on. I am referring to the exercise, in which the group of participants were divided in small communities, each one with a set of specific material resources to build a house big enough to shelter every inhabitant. Obviously, there were richer communities in certain items than others, developing natural inequalities that we can actually find in the real world.

Another very interesting thing was the internal dynamics and the relations between communities. Mine being the poorest (we had sticks more than enough to build a solid structure of the house but not enough cardboard to build the walls and roof), we felt the inequality more intensively. Our first reaction was of inferiority comparing to other communities, and we felt almost immediately the injustice and despair. Our second reaction was to get our hands dirty.

At this second stage, each member of my community took a particular position. Some acted straight away and started building the house with what they had – after all, it’s the Poor Mentality: if you have beans and potatoes, and your neighbour has meat and pasta, it’s not worth looking at his plate and drool, might as well make some soup with what you have.

Others tried to see the big picture and come up with alternative solutions with the wealthier neighbors.
They asked them what was their building plan, to see if it was compatible in any way with ours, they questioned them about the chance of swapping materials, and in every attempt a negative response came. The wealthier community could not understand that we had things they needed (the structure), and they had things that we needed. Fortunately, during the game, we could find some solidarity from other communities that helped us without wanting anything in exchange.

In the end, everyone had incomplete, ugly and broken houses. Only afterwards, we’ve been told that we could have made ONE house, together, uniting forces to overcome each community’s limitation, that we could step out and observe the bigger objective of the exercise. We had failed on finding consensus, unity and flexibility. Naturally, the frustration was installed between all participants, such as an uprising for the lost time and despair about how to start over.

It is expected some resistance to change. It is hard to accept that our efforts have turned out useless, that we need each other to reach what we want. Those who have too much don’t want to share out of fear of the future; those who have too little fear asking for help and be forever in debt of the past. Overall, it’s hard to leave in the present and think that it is possible to live in harmony with different cultures, and that it is possible to overcome barriers that seemed at first sight insurmountable. It is possible to look beyond what we’ve been taught since we were kids about rules, and stereotypes, and right or wrong. It is hard to change, but it is possible, and more than that, it’s a necessity in the current world.  We are all Made in the World.

Rita Nunes

Youth exchange project, I guess, is the perfect background for developing yourself as an independent person, who can firmly stand on its own opinion and be able to speak, expressing  feelings, remaining confident, that  you will be heard.

It was a part of a beg program of EU , which called Europe4All?. Before the beginning of Youth Exchange Program the leaders of groups were gathered in Agape Centro Ecumenico in Prali to create plan and prepare activities for adults.

Activities were created in the way to urge persons with absolutely different temperaments stay together, discussing, finding solutions in controversial positions following the main aim – saving good relationships in groups. The way of sharing were different – debates, role games etc.

All for them had only one goal – to break all prejudice and stereotypes, that we had about different  countries, because here were gather four countries from European continent but not all of them consist in EU. Portugal, Italy, Ukraine and Macedonia  – perfect combination of cultures from the western part of continent till eastern. The common language was English, despite of some problems in understanding, because of speaking level  four languages were heard.

During one day I had a pleasure to observe a diversity of people’s character beauty in some role game, where adults were separated on two groups, each of them got a task to perform generally a little bit different roles according to their community and absolutely opposite to the other second group. They had to be as united unit, defending interests of community in dialogs with their neighbors. One of the group was an engineers, another was independent country, that wanted to have something, that engineers could offer them. As the result, both of team achieved installed tasks and game was finished successfully.

For me, as for participant from non EU country was a great experience to figure out, how do the people from union live, which are their problems and how do they perceive opinions from outside of EU.

Also I’ve got a lot of interesting facts about im migrants problems after interviewing fellows from Gambia and Bangladesh, they opened for me the world of live of refugees.

I’m sure, that this experience as a participant and also as a leader of my group will help me in my future life to achieve more, than I have.

Vitali Solonýna