All my life I was fascinated with the idea move one time to the Baltics, and the Open Mind Open Horizons project gave me the opportunity I was looking for. The project it was, in a few words, about art and performing, where I could have the chance to add some value, namely in the music and photography activities, in a cozy small countryside city, called Cesis, 2 hours from Riga. I move to there on August 1st and I comeback to Portugal several days after the end of the project, which was on September 2st. I just knew I would work together with more 7 volunteers from Portugal, Italy, France, Hungary and Spain.
Looking back to these all days there I’m realizing how intense and grateful was my experience. Of course I had bad things too, some adaptation problems (how a miss the beautiful Portuguese sunny days…) and a big cultural shock. But do you know what? I´m feel much more strong and with better knowledge about myself than before. This short-term project gave me nice moments and experiences to know myself, to see how able I am to work in an international group environment, to increase my English language level and, of course, to learn, sharing and teaching a lot of stuffs. The bright light shining in these kind of projects and experiences it’s the possibility to feel you are not only dealing with informal learning process, but also you are working in a professional and responsibility spirit, where you care about a lot of things, you feel you are growing up, acquiring new skills and tools, getting professional and social experience, and you still work or to be in a funny and informal environment, where you have space and time to make mistakes, to be pro-active and entrepreneur, where you learn by doing and you really take part in the process to achieve the goals of the project.
We got our goals, we made it happen. During 4 weeks we planned, organized and prepared all the activities and moments of the project, we made a lot of brain storming’s and group dynamics to reach it, we gave “wings” to our creativity to fly and we had space to be pro-active and put into the project that characteristics and skills you know well you are good. The feedback from the participants was awesome and we need to be proud of it. Such a heterogeneous and different profiles/background group could to reach a great team spirit level, finding common goals and purposes and, at the end, get a great experience, give fun and good memories to the participants. In overall, what all of us were looking for when we applied for it.
Since some years ago I’m taking the advantages of the Erasmus+ program, from doing exchanges and internships to volunteer projects. It´s wonderful what European Union gives us. Not only about the financial issues but the huge opportunity to think further, to meet people from all Europe, to have the possibility of acquiring the European values and the European citizenship, which makes us bigger than you were before.
I will remember this full month for long time. I will stay connected with it and I will try to take part in more projects. It’s kind of a good addiction, you know?!
Jose
No comments:
Post a Comment