Youth Exchange Program in Regensburg, Germany: A few of us from the Excellence Center went to a Youth Exchange Program outside the city of Regensburg in Germany by Shelter international e.V. It was through the organization of Erasmus and the topic of the project was Gender Equality. About 45 participants, ages 18-30, from 6 different host countries gathered for a week to discuss this theme. We lived, ate, slept, and played together in a huge retreat center. Many people already knew each other, either from school, university, or simply living in the same city.
6 Countries
While individuals came from 6 countries (Germany, Spain, Slovakia, Italy, Portugal, and the UK), many more countries and cultures were represented amongst our group. Countries such as Pakistan, Syria, Turkiye, Azerbaijan, Columbia, United States, India, and Iraq were also represented as well as many of the participants had immigrated to other countries.
Get to know other cultures
This created even more diversity during the project and opportunities to further get to know other cultures. We all enjoyed getting to know each other this way, especially through the international nights where the teams got to present about their host country or country of origin, through food, dance, games, etc. This led to very unique perspectives being shared and brought to light during our discussions.
One of the aspects of this trip that was valued the most was getting to know friends from the Excellence Center on a deeper level than we had before. Seeing each other all day everyday (eating, sleeping in the same room, going on excursions) lets one get to know things about them one never would and maybe never wanted to. More importantly, this trip gave us the time and space to ask one another questions we wouldn’t have before, especially on the topic of gender equality.
There was not always the time to have in-depth discussions with every individual during the project, but many of us still made the effort to discuss these things more with those around on our own. What did we agree with what was said? What didn’t we? How did we think people from our community would think and react to what was being said? While it was very interesting to hear conversations on these topics from such a range of people, it mattered more what the people in our daily lives thought as we would continue to connect with them regularly.
Unique environment to explore new topics
While this opportunity may not come around again, we are grateful for the experiences we had because of it and the people we got to meet. The program was very much discussion based and led by the participants involved which created a very unique environment to explore new topics in. People brought to light experiences one could not have even imagined, let alone lived through.
Everyone had something different but valuable to share and we were all given the opportunity to be heard. For many, this was what mattered the most- having a safe and comfortable space to be ourselves, process new information, and express whatever we would like to share with each other.
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