United in Diversity – Syke
In the video you can see the atmosphere of our project in Syke, and a small testimonial of one of our volunteer down below:
Matea:
My favorite experience during this youth exchange was definitely an afternoon we spent with refugees and the local community of Syke. Since I’ve been volunteering with refugees in Croatia for over a year now, it was interesting to see how the integration process is done on a local level in a country like Germany. The fact that all people seemed happy and shared their stories easily just proved how successful we can include people in our community, if we want to. Playing with kids who spoke perfect German also melted my heart and reminded me of some dear individuals I’ve met in Croatia that continued their journey all the way to Germany or Austria.
Secondly, during the whole project kitchen played essential role when it came to connecting new people. During the day we would sneak in there to grab a sandwich or a cup of coffee, in the late afternoon national teams would start preparing dinner. Even just talking about food all day long made us all feel happy, and after we would finish dinner, we would go back to kitchen, trying to help each other with the cleaning and afterwards sharing a beer or two while talking and laughing. It was surely the warmest place in the house.
Last but not the least, making plans about future Erasmus+ projects and brainstorming with my Croatian team made realize how skilled we all are at something. What is more, that was probably the part where we all opened ourselves about our hopes and dreams about the future, which was a great ending to such an amazing project.
To sum it all up, I did not only learn a lot about others during this project, but also about myself and also made really good friends from all over the world, with whom I still talk to on a daily basis which made this youth exchange one of the nicest experiences I had in a long time.