May 14th – May 22nd 2017, Braunlage, Germany
Four participants from Croatia participated in the Erasmus+ training course named „Guerilla Youthwork“ from 14-22 May 2017 in Braunlage, Germany, organized by NaturKultur e.V. In total forty participants were invloved in the project arriving from seven different countries: Croatia, Macedonia, Germany, Latvia, Romania, Spain and Greece. The sole purpose of the project was to find guerilla solutions for problems that small NGO’s face everyday in order to gain sustainbility within the organization and within their communities and apply the aquired knowledge within their own organizations.
Throughout the project youth workers from various NGO’s worked together in teams on finding solutions concerning the lack of financing, PR and media exposure, political influence and lack of management skills. Within the project participants have also gained valuable knowledge as to how to correctly apply and receive funds from Erasmus+ projects by being put into teams and developing their own project on the spot with assistance of the trainers know-how and by the use of real-life examples. Another focus was to network with other NGO’s and develop future strategic partnerships which will help in attacking current issues society faces.
Each trainer had their unique know-how and approach which they shared with participants to enhance the skills of youth workers and quality of NGO’s. Methods such as „Peripatetica“ were used to attack current issues that citizens of the European Union (and others) are facing concerning solidarity and tolerance, as well as and „Open Market“ were each NGO had the opportunity to present their organization in an unique and original way for networking purposes. “Mindshowers” (or brainstorming; as it was called) was a common method for tackling the above mentioned issues.
Every night we had a chance to cook and prepare national dinners from different countries and, with that, experience an important part of every nationality. Cooking (with music of course). It was a great way to get a glimpse of how it feels to be Greek or Latvian etc. With that, there were also creative presentations of every country which was a great segue for mingling, asking questions, dancing, sharing experience.
The level of cooperation in an intercultural environment was on a very high level. At one moment it occurred to me while we were successfully flowing from one idea and solution to another, there were 8 of us in a group, and every one of us was from a different country. The ease with which we communicated and shared ideas was something I felt before only with my own countrymen. One of the reasons I think it was like that was because of the group building exercises we did in the beginning of the project. It wasn’t the tasks that were the reason but the way we accomplished those tasks. We did it as a group, leaving every person satisfied at the end of it.