Follow up activity in Bucharest, Romania

Dears,

Long time since I did not write on this blog anymore, and I missed it!

But now I write from my home, in my bed… and not in Estonia. But still, remembering all those things makes me feel good J

So, what is the reason for writing? To share with you all what I have done here in Romania as follow-up activity after the TC in Estonia, on stereotypes and prejudices.

When I came back to work from wonderful Estonia, I was talking to my boss at a coffee about how it was in Estonia. And, among others, I told her that I should have a follow-up activity here in Romania, regarding this topic. And guess what she tells me? Wouldn’t you like it to do it here with us, in our team? I thought of it….yep! It sounds good to me. Why not? As for the logistic part, it would be much easier! I have an easy to get room at the office, I would have all the stuffs such as pens, chart papers, markers etc etc.

So… I send invitations, I searched for a second co-trainer and here we are on the 9^th of March. Ah yes, about the co-trainer. As you can easily imagine, I could not do it as the trainers (s) should integrate in the group discussions and facilitate the activities. So, I had a good friend the works in the same place with me and she was excited about the idea.

The agenda, briefly, was about to contain: team building, my identity molecule, a small break, energizer, greetings, cafeteria and discussion.

I write beforehand the chart papers for the cafeteria and for the molecule.

It was something quite familiar with what we have done in Tartu: half a day training and more or less the same activities.

So, here are the activities in more details: in a Friday afternoon, 15 people gathered in Bucharest for a workshop on stereotypes, discrimination and prejudices.

We started with an energizer and to get to know each other better. Although we are colleagues at work, we do not know too many personal things one about the other.  In order for me to participate as well, I asked the co-trainer (Gabi) to make this energizer for is: arrange according to the age, talking, in a semi circle. Then, arrange according to the number of brothers, only saying yes or no and the last one, arrange according to the sign of the zodiac, not talking at all. Pretty fun it was!

Then, on the agenda we had another energizer: the 1,2,3….molecule ( now, molecules of 2!, molecules of 3! People walking around and suddenly gathering in small molecules and then walking again), but we were a bit tired physically after the first one so we decided to go directly to the next part: the identity molecule. Of course I spoke a lot before with Gabi about what and how to do, I told her how we did it in Estonia, both in Vidrike and in Tartu, what other activities we had and we have chosen together what best fits.

Now, the molecule: I explained the rules of the game to everybody, made the distinction of what should and what should not be included in the identity (not features of personality); first, I shared mine:

Sister, divorced parents, explorer (thank you Heleri for inspiration :) ), volunteer and mathematically thinker.

Afterwards, Gabi shared hers:

 

Then, we shared post-its and papers to everybody, explained the rules and let then thinking for 10 minutes about their identity….

People going to other corners of the room….

So, what is the post-it for and what is the paper for…? J

Counting… guess how !

Uks, koks, kolm .. J

Give some guidelines…

Here we go into small groups for a half an hour to discuss… and discuss… and discuss….

I had again the same great experience as in Estonia: people that do not know each other that well, find that they have do many things in common! Guys, we only have two minutes left OK? Ahhh… only two minutes? L

I also was in a discussion but went sooner to write down all the words on the chart paper. Not sure how much you will understand, but some are comprehensible:

Some of them: Bigger sister, analytical, observer, family oriented, atypical Aries, silent, daughter, cultural diversity, sister, faith, study, travel, water, desert, movement, woman, books, seeking, catholic, art, French language etc….

Then, we came back in the big circle and sit and stand, sit and stand for the words that we felt that we identifies ourselves, does not matter whether we wrote them or not.

The words are over,  let’s have a sit now and debate a bit this. How was it to choose the words? For some of them difficult, for some others easier… how was it to stand up when you were in a small group? I felt special J what about when you were in a big group? I felt.. covered. And some more debate on it.

Ok, time for a break J

We had some cookies and other goodies ….

And here we are back in business…  in a fishy business, as we played piranha game! Some newspapers and islands, many fishes walking here and there, piranha attacks! J

Fast, fast come on our island ! 

Then…everybody let’s make a world tour and salute all the others in our own. And as we travel, let’s learn how others greet. Yes! The greetings activity !

Now, let’s breathe and take a coffee… in the cafeteria J

I had written all the papers beforehand and they were all on tables already.

We counted in turkey 1, 2, 3…bir, iki, uc J

Topics: roots of discrimination, how to fight the discrimination and the quadrant (victim, attacker, bystander and confronter). Just as we did in Tartu.

I adjusted a bit the activity: on one table there were all the three of them. The first to be discussed and filled in was the one with the roots, then how to fight and then the quadrant. Why I did this/ because… people did not have enough previous knowledge about the topic and it would have been quite weird to go straight to the quadrant. What to write? What do you mean by “I was discriminated”? So, first they brainstormed about the roots, then find some solutions and in the last time, remember some personal situations….

Here are some of the outcomes we had:

Team / topic	Roots of discrimination	How to fight discrimination
Team 1	Generalization Education Personal negative experiences Negative examples Intolerance Lack of consequences ( punishments for discriminating) Inability to understand and / or accept  new concepts Inequality Lack of programs for fighting discrimination Ignoring the problems of minorities Generalizing negative experiences	Renouncing at your own prejudices Social integration programs Creation of equal chances for each At professional level – objectivity of choice
Team 2	Lack of information Ignorance Prejudices Own personality issues Personal wealth Inability to understand differences	Education Objective information ( mass media – pros and contras) Legislation Social programs
Team 3	Origins Color Social class Sex Disabilities Sexual orientation Clothes Religion Culture Mentality	Education in the family Social programs Targeted trainings ( for youth, for children, for adults) Mass media Exchanges ( for students and for professionals) Multiculturalism Flash mobs

For the quadrant we also had quite interesting ideas. Some were personal experiences about: discrimination because of appearance (clothing), or because the attitude ( hippy style, arrogant -> generalization), desire to get involved in a certain activity when someone had a very different background – people had prejudices and were not very willing to integrate her; regional discrimination (people coming from Moldavia); bad experiences with Romanians in Italy ; communication with the Indian colleagues ( we as attackers – they do not very complex jobs and because of this, we tend to disregard them);

After each team presented their discussion, we came back in the big circle and sum up the cafeteria activity.

Among other debates, each said one word or idea that is the most important for him / her from this workshop. Here are some of them: calm atmosphere, good trainers J , structured workshop, awareness, flash mobs ( most of them did not know about it), forum theatre, the consequences that the small things may have, the greetings J

Here we are at the end of the workshop now.

I also had a feedback form, that was filed in by 10 participants, and here are the questions, and near them the number of respondents. For the open questions, I have gathered here all the answers. 

Workshop on stereotypes and prejudices

and team building

A.    The trainers’ knowledge about the subject was:

1. Excellent 5
2. OK 5
3. Poor

B.     How was the duration of the workshop?

1. Too short. Couldn't learn enough in such a short time.2

2. A little too short 3. Just fine

4. A little too long   8

5. Definitely too long. The concepts could be learned in much less time.

Comments and suggestions.

C. Were the trainers helpful with practical activities?

1. No, not enough

2.

3.

4. 9

5. Yes. The instructor definitely helped to make the activities a learning opportunity.9

D. How do you rate workshop conditions (room size, equipment, environment...)?

1. Poor.

2.

3. 2

4. 5

5. Very 2

E. How well was the workshop organized (the schedule)?

1. Not well.

2.

3. 1

4. 3

5. Very well 6

F. Thinking about your day to day life, how useful was this workshop?

1. Not useful.

2.

3. 1

4. 3

5. Very useful. 6

Comments?

The quadrant part

Discrimination topic – thinking more  about Discrimination and taking action on it

G. What did you like most about the course?

Knowing each other

Everything

The games J

The sitting and standing from the molecule activity

Finding new things about the others

Nice atmosphere

The trainers facilitated very well the course

Excellent atmosphere

Materials

Structure

Discrimination topic

The discrimination part

Identification of things that build our identity (molecule)

I liked the fact that we had many activities and interactions between our team.

H. During today workshop what activity you like the most??

1. My identity molecule 8

2. Greetings 1

3. Cafeteria (roots of discrimination, how to fight discrimination and the quadrant) 1

I.       What would you recommend changing about the training?

More cookies

The molecule – more trainings on this

I would not change anything, it is good, I would put even more activities in it to give the possibility of interaction.

J. Overall rating

1. Very disappointing

2. Disappointing

3. A little bit disappointing

4. OK 1

5. Pretty good 4

6. Very good 2

7. Excellent 3

K. Other comments, observations, suggestions:

Million thanks for facilitating such an interesting , structured workshop ! great job

Overall it was a very nice team activity

Great job

Thank you ! J

So my dears, this was my workshop... and if i had any expectation, it definitely exceeded it. It was fun, entairtaining, useful, a learining opportunity for all of us, a chance to know each other better and most of all, to become more aware of the issue of discrimination. What have I learned from this activity? :) There was one idea mentioned at a point.. that the small things we do or say for others may be of a huge effect...for us it may mean zero, while for the other one might mean so many things.

I wish you a lot of good luck in your activities, though I am sure that they will all be successfull !

Adriana 

Stop Labeling Yourself – a real life experience

I'm not very sure that my experience gained in the project "Stop Labeling Yourself" (Vidrike, Estonia, January 23rd - February 1st, 2012) can be summarized only in 5-10 lines. But I can try to tell you briefly how I came to be involved in the project, my impressions regarding people involved in this project and the impact  that this training course had on me. First, Estonia has been for me, along with the other Baltic countries, a place I never imagined that I will get to see in the near future. Estonia also seemed a land of story, but as the magical realms from stories, not very accessible to everyone.

So here I am, at the end of January 2012, in Estonia, without a concrete idea about what I was about to learn here, only the theme itself - discrimination, stereotypes that the way we use them every day, often without realizing how badly we hurt ourselves and especially those around us -  representing a maximum challenge for my personal development.

And behold! I saw myself on the first day (more correct would be to say the first night) project, surrounded by a lot of young people coming from countries like Belgium, Hungary, Croatia, Turkey, Latvia, Lithuania, France, Estonia and Bulgaria, young people like me, excited, slightly shy, but eager to get to know each other, discovering differences, ideas, opinions. After a relatively easy breaking - the - ice process, finally, at the end of the project we almost cried - everything ended so soon. I don't want to tell you in detail what I did in each of the nine days spent in Vidrike, I just want to say that I walked slightly reluctant in the wooden chalet where I was to spend the next few days, I hadn't great confidence that I will go home with more knowledge, but instead I left full of "revolutionary" ideas. During the training course, I rediscovered myself as an individual, I realized the things that define me, I realized the mistakes I do, more often than I ever imagined, and I decided that my future plans, already established, were radically about to change. So, I can say that this experience was a revelation, for me, in addition to fun, new friends, memories and useful information that I gained, I also outlined new directions - professional and personal ones, that perhaps I would have never considered suitable for me if I haven't had the chance to evaluate myself in this particular way. And I could do that because of the wonderful people that I have met in this project, the distinguished trainers, always ready to help us with advices, opinions, ideas or a good word, and last but not least, because of these amazing persons that  made this experience possible for me. Thanks ASCU!

Alexandra Alexa 

Looking back at the nine days in Vidrike....

So how was the training course? It’s a difficult question. I have been thinking a lot and I see, that training had some effects we expected, and other, totally unexpected. I believe that everyone got something from the training course, some more some less. But it all comes back to the starting point – how much people were willing to put in, the more they got out of it. And I see that some people got really a lot, which makes me happy. Change starts from small things, from people themselves. Then I thought about this training course, I had in mind a sentence said by victim of genocide, just before he was killed:

“If you knew me and if you knew yourself, you would not kill me”

I think this is one of deepest ideas one could say – to understand why we act in the way we do, we must first learn to understand ourselves. Why we hate, why we love... why we care and why we don’t? It all has reasons behind, some clear and some vague.

I sincerely believe that one person can make a difference. If I try to understand, care and give effort, there is chance for wider change. Society, after all, is made of individuals and all starts from us. My contribution was to organize this training course, to unite 25 people, to think together, think about ourselves, learn together and try to find together ways to change society around us.

All effects of the training course might not be so visible. Sometimes it’s hard to answer the question “What did I learn?”. Sometimes it’s good to set some goals, aims – try to reach something concrete – get answers to the questions. At other times, it is also good to realize that now there are even more questions to be answered. Maybe the learning is that I am not able to share so personal things and then the question is why? (and there is something to think about again). I put intentionally the name on feedback questionnaire on the last page. Even through adding the name was not obligatory, it is good to ask why would the feedback differ if it’s anonymous or not? Would our honest opinion really depend on it? I was once in this situation, too and I was first quite angry that I had to write a name on a paper which I thought was going to be anonymous  - but then I thought about it and I saw no reason to hide my name, as what was written was indeed my opinion.

So what did I learn?  There are some things which are very clear, and others, I’m still thinking about. For sure I learned that it is not easy to be a trainer if the topic is personal. I realized that my role was somehow negative (even though no one planned it this way) as I was the one who asked people to open up, share personal experience, remember the past and think about the future. And at the same time I couldn’t join in any discussion, even though I would have liked to do so. I only asked, and could not share. And what I learned, no one knew. At the same time, it made me really happy, if I saw how people opening up, getting deep in the topic and realizing things (sometimes even not realizing it themselves). And I did learn about my stereotypes, some so deep that I realized them just now; we all have prejudices, and sometimes it’s a rewarding feeling to understand that you have realized them and can now be more aware and conscious. Our minds are made up by society, people around us, media, friends, family... many contributing sides – what we can do ourselves is just to think – is it really my idea? Or is my idea so right, that there is no need to even consider alternative ideas or just listen to them? Why not just listen, even if I don’t agree and be open to new ideas?

I would like to thank everyone, who came for these nine days to Vidrike. I can say that I learned something from all of you and I will never forget any of you. Good luck in putting your ideas into practice!

Heleri

Poem For "Stop Labeling Yourself"

   I want to post the poem which Ada and me wrote and read during the project ;

Our group had a difficult task

"Let's make people ask

What are we talking about ?

We will tell you,

Just be quiet

P.S Andrius, don't shout ! 

      So, we gather all together

      To make clear what really matter

      And that's why we all went abroad

      To take the anti-label road.

French are snobbish,

Latvian cold,

Turkish are late

as we have been told

Croatians are lazy

or Estonian slow

We don't care as along as we're all together

naked in a snow! 

"Stop Labeling Yourself" Day 7

Yesterday was the day were we had to put into practice all the things we learned during our training in Vidrike. Indeed, today me and the rest of our team (Alexa, Ieva, Serhan, Stella, Michel and Csaba) all went to Valga to give a training to 25 youngster in the town of Valga which is at the border of Estonia and Latvia. This is the big finale for us as it's the day where we will have to demonstrate and practice what we learned.

Our day started quite early, we woke up at 7 am to be ready to leave Vidrike at 8am. I must say that waking up was not an easy as we had a tiring day the day before. In the bus taking us to Valga, pretty much all of us were freezing and sleepy but definitely ready to do our job. We were all very excited and did not really know what to expect from our target audience, we knew there will be some youth workers and other high school kids. But we did not know whether they would be open to share with us their opinions and a bit about who they are, so the suspense was complete.

We finally arrived in Valga, we had the nice surprise that the place where our training course was taking place was great. The first participants arrived as we were finishing our set up and we quickly understood that our audience was mainly composed of girls aged between 15 and 17 years old. Straight from the beginning we tried to make them feel comfortable and show them that today they will learn something in a different way than they do it at school. Our agenda was quite heavy as we decided to cover different topics included: exploring stereotypes, confronting stereotypes and my identity. We knew that we had to be really careful with our time management in order to be able to cover all the topics of the day but at the end it turned out that we ran all the tasks in time.

We first started our session with some games to break the ice and make everyone more familiar with each other. After that we started discussing our different topics, the participants seemed quite interested but only a few of them were spontaneously talking. So we decided to make a round check where everyone gets to speak. This took a bit more time but at least we got the chance to hear the opinion of everyone. After our stereotype game we discovered that our participant had quite some strong stereotypes about different things that drew our attention like the stereotypes they had about Russians and Muslims. We had some nice conversation where different participants explained that it's not good to generalize a group of people based on a specific situation and that we all should go beyond our stereotypes to discover who the other s are and think for ourselves and be the architect of our own decisions.

The rest of the session was also very interesting. I believe that the part that the participants liked the most was ''My identity" where they all had to tell others in small groups 5 things that defines them as a person. I think some of them went deep in the subject while for others it was a bit harder to talk about themselves and they were not willing to share their privacy with strangers, which we understand.

Out of this experience, we really learned how to practice and pass on what we have learned from our training week in Vidrike. Our team was really happy about what we did in Valga, our session went smoothly, we had fun. And from the feedback we got from our trainees, they also had a nice day. I think that most of them got the point of the training which is to go beyond the stereotypes that we all can have and explore new roads. For some of them it was not clear what stereotypes was about but in general we all agreed that this subject needs much more time and that one day training is not enough.

Jalal

DAY 6 PART II

Second part of the day we were discussion about confronting sterotypes. For me the one part of the exersice was hard... you may ask why? Beacuse for me there were too many bad memories being a vicitm, plus my experience was much more personal than others' in our group. I think the quartes exercise was a good one. To see situations in different ways through different roles you have played and to realize that sometimes you have been attacker too... :( Here I wanna apologize to everyone who I hurt somehow!

Third part of day we were preparing tomorrows practical session. In our group we divided who does what and then went to smaller groups to discuss. I was with Serkan and Rosi.
We thought what to do and how to do it. We had two subjects:

• explore streotypes
• confronting streotypes.

We agreed to use world cafe method (you can read about this method in English http://www.theworldcafe.com/)
The 4 topics what we choosed were:

• What does " Stop labeling yourself" means ?
• The Roots of discrimination
• Anti-discrimination
• Victim, Attacker, Bystander and Confronter

I think in the end of the day everyone could feel proud of themselves and the contribution they put into the work to make THE BEST PRACTICAL SESSION IN TARTU :D

Thanks teammates ;)

Training Session in Valga

Hey there! Four straight sunny days and some of them spent in Vidrike, Valga, Otepää and Tartu. Think we had a great day yesterday with the team in Valga doing a short training sessions for youngsters and a few youth workers. Time went really fast and seemed trainers could have shared more than there was time planned for them.

Living together with people from 10 different countries for more than a week, discussing predjudices and stereotypes, observing others made me appreciate being present in the moment. Time slowed down, noise disappeared. Personally, it was a time to look into myself and rediscover my core that had been covered in so much bullshit over the last few years. Namely, I had built a wall thick enough around my heart, so that nothing could get in unless I was ready. The wall is still there but time spent in Vidrike has punched a few cracks in it and fragile rays of light sneek into my heart.

Looking back, I’ve been pretty good at building superficial relationships cause I didn’t want to get close to anyone or anything. Didn’t want to reveal myself, my thoughts, desires, fears. Though, I love to hear people sharing their doubts and fears with me I didn’t see why they hadn’t done it. And it struck me - what you give is what you get. I didn’t contribute but I expected others to do it (no input, no output). Can’t say I’m super great at sharing a piece of me after a week in Vidrike but I decided to practice it every day. Feels like I’m peeling off layers of dark matter one by one to get back to self.

I already miss the people I got to know during those days, I miss that house away from our everyday lives. And being away was a time I needed to forget the obligations and tasks, the fast pace of life. We all took some time off. And honestly, I didn’t have high expectations from helping to set out that training session cause I had imagined I’d just get in, do my job and get out. Like a “mechanic” with an itchy trigger finger. But then some things started to get to me and I realized others are vulnerable and fragile, too. Just like me. Although, I somewhat regret not engaging myself into conversations and getting to know participants more… only thing I know is I’m learning from that experience and growing (and growing always hurts) ,that I could be the best I can be for days to come.

The above picture was made in Valga with one third of our whole group. Lots of people attended, mostly high schoolers to whom the topic might have been a bit heavy to grasp. So, the experience group got from being trainers themselves could have had a better effect with a group slightly more experienced. Therefore, discussions were rather casual at some point with a few exceptions that struck the core. However, feedback at the end of the session was honest, 100% right and very good for the group. And I’m glad it didn’t work out perfect, otherwise our group wouldn’t have had anything to learn from. I am so proud of everyone in Valga, my big thanks goes out to Stella, Serhan, Alexa, Jalal, Michel, Ieva and Csaba!!!

Training Session in Tartu

On 30th of January we had three training sessions: two in Tartu and one in Valga. I was observing group nr 2 in Tartu. Our group was very well prepared. Ada, Adriana, Camille, Serkan, Rosica, Gundega and Elina were giving their best. At 10 am some participants were still missing, so we decided to wait little bit more. After 10 minutes our guest arrived, about 29 people. There were about 7-10 high school students, others mostly students from university and we had two teachers also.

Ada began introduction with a short presentation about our training "Stop Labeling Yourself". She captured everybody's attention. After that everybody had a change to introduce themselves, our group carried out several different workshops. For example drawing the identity molecul and talking about stereotypes in smaller groups.

In the beginning it was hard to make participants speak, to share their opinion, but Gundega found a good solution to this problem. She took a pen and said that now this is a microphone and everyone will have to when the microphone reaches him or her. Gundega gave the pen alias microphone to one participant and participants started talking when they received the pen. After that we could hear much more different opinions and training went on more vividly. I wish that all participants learned something about themselves and the society from during this training. For sure, it was a good opportunity for our group to experience carrying out workshops by themselves.

Katja

Day 6

At the earliest morning (10 am) we energized ourselves in Lins way: touch the thing you like in person next to you and kiss the thing you don't like on the same person. For me it was easy because I was talking about apstract things. So it was impossible to touch Stipe's jokes or to kiss his silence.
But others were not so happy by kissing and touching arms; lips; buts...
it was funny; thank you Lin!
After touching and kissing we got serious: so we touched the topic of equality!
We had interesting task - to guess who is behind few sentences which says about strange people with strange behaviour... it was really surprising when we got the answer.. we learned again that it's easy to put people in boxes and judge only on first impressions..
Third part was also interesting - Anti-discrimination coffee!
There were 4 tables with topics: What does stop labeling yourself mean, Discrimination in my country; How to fight discrimination and Roots of discrimination. The whole group had awesome ideas but Michel was the main star with his anti-discrimination flag: he draw the symbol of libra which reperesents equality among all differencies.
long live equality,
Michel for president!!!

Ada Reic

"Stop Labeling Yourself" Day 5

We woke up around 8.30am for a beautifull sunny morning with -18C outside! After getting ready, we went down to have a great breakfast. Food here in Vidrike very healthy and full of salads. As we finished breakfast and introductions for the day we started to work on our days' project (stereotypes: Man and Woman) in two big groups. First, we listed what are the positive and negative stereotypes of men. Then we had to think and list the stereotypes about women. In the two separate groups we had discussions about both issues and than the groups showed and talked about outcomes in different separate groups.

We had a delicious lunch at 13.30pm and we took off towards Tartu city for the rest of the day at 14.30pm. We had recommendations to visit Science Museum of Tartu but it was not obligatory. Big part of the group visited the Science Museum which we liked a lot. Rest of the participants went for shopping gifts and sightseeing because the weather was cold but sunny. The whole group met at 7.50pm in front of the kissing students statue of Tartu city from where we all went to have dinner in a nice restaurant in the city center. After dinner the bus picked us up at 11pm in the center and we all came back to Vidrike to rest.

Serkan Toso

Daniel Toth-Szekeres

Day 4 - exploring stereotypes

What a great way to start the day... a beautiful sunrise! This was an amazing energy. The adventure started at 10am as usual. The topic of the day was exploring stereotypes. First, we had a greetings game, a possibility to explore different ways to say hi! Our planet is divided into many different countries which all have different manners. Each country has its own way to greet people. It was a matter of culture (we explored French, Japan, Polynesia etc). We noticed the way of greeting is totally different in each country or area. The greeting is necessary for communicating with whomever and wherever they live. What we found interesting was that although we use all these gestures to greet oneanother, there was more: the way we do it, we share a little bit of our culture and customs. And something funny ixix (Serkan - the way to say hi... he had to spit on other's feet to greet them!!!) But this exercise was just for introducing us the main topic.

Stereotype are a general statement about a group of people based on incomplete information, impressions made by the mass media, culture and history based knowledge.

During the next activity that we had, we were supposed to get our hands together and listen to sentences and decide if it related to us. We had to take one step forward or back depending on the way we consider it - an advantage or a disadvantage. There were certain things that let some of us behind and others were steps ahead (Michel for example didn't have enough room so he almost went out in the snow) We discovered the things that pushed us forward were mostly features and characteristics that were determined from the moment of our birth. What we found interesting as well was the fact that despite there were some of us behind, we tried not to break the chain and stick together.

Next activity: each of us got to pick up a piece of paper with a word written on it.. namely our new identity. The main aim was to imagine ourselves as this person and walk in that person's shoes, trying to answer questions about our daily lives. In particular, how things would change, would we have more or less opportunities and understanding from our friends, family and from the society. We all found this exercise quite difficult in a way that this single word was changing every single thing that we considered part of our existence. Afterwards, we were divided into groups of 5 and had discussions on what we did and the way we felt and what we had experienced.

Here are some of the questions:

1. List 5 specific ways you believe your life will change.
2. Predict how others will respond to you, attitudes of your immediate family, close friends, community and society as a whole.
3. What will you need and/or expect from others that you may not have needed or expected before.
4. As this new person, do you believe you have more or less power in your workplace? In society?

Last part of this journey through our stereotypes was a labeling game:

"First word that comes to mind". We had to associate the word written on the paper with the feeling and thought that it provokes in us and write it down on a sheet of paper.

We had to admit, it was a long day full of activities. We were tired but what was important was that we had learned so much about ourselves and about the stereotypes that we use to judge people and label them.

Rosica, Csaba, Alexa, Tsvetelin

"Stop Labeling Yourself" Day 3

We woke up at 9 o'clock as usual and had a delicious breakfast. The training began at 10 o'clock with a funny energizer. Participants were fish and the trainers were piranhas who want to catch and eat the fish. Fish had the option of getting to an island so that piranhas could not catch them. Every time one or more fish were eaten, once island is destroyed by piranhas to get advantage.

After that lovely energiser training session began with the personal artifact. Every participant brought a personal object which is important for him/her or tells about his/her identity. In small groups, participants discussed about their personal artifacts which are clues about their identity. Then, we had a half an hour coffee break.

After the coffee break, my identity 1 began. Trainers explained us what to do and trainees built their own molecules of identity. They wrote five charesteristics of them that tells about their identity. Then, we are seperated into small groups and asked to discuss about our identities. That session was very beneficial because everybody in the small groups had a chance to get to know each other better.

After the lunch, in the discussion participants told they felt very comfortable why they are talking about themselves and it was also good to know another person's thoughts and identities. We found out despite the fact that we are coming from all different countries and cultures we have many things in common.

Then we had a coffee break again at 5 o'clock to half past 5. After that we discussed about what did we learn from the day's workshops and how did we feel during the explaining our identities. Everybody agreed that going deeper into the topic made everyone closer. And all of us tried to express ourselves clearly. We learned to have tolerance towards others who have different identities and choices than us.

In the learning buddies and feedback group discussions we summarize things we learned together. That reinforces our learned things. Then we had dinner and after was the Estonian night. Estonians presented their countries and that provided us with more information about Estonia. And with Alias game we learned some Estonian words.

Serhan Oktay and Stipe Plejic

"Stop Labeling Yourself" Day 2

On Wednesday, 25th of January we woke up in the morning, had delicious pancakes for breakfast and started our journey through the day. Everybody were fresh and eager to learn, although we do not spend too much time on sleeping here, but the night before we had sauna night and from sauna we ran into the snow of course, after which everybody felt really relaxed and we all had a really good sleep. Before starting with session, we had a really cool energizer - PILLOW RALLY!!! Our first learning session was about non-formal learning. We learned more about different Youth in Action projects, we presented to each-other what are the differences between project types etc. Then, we also put each other knowledge on test – we had a quiz about different Youth in Action project types. Luckily, people had paid attention during presentations and everybody did quite well during the quiz.

The second day of the project was the day when we got into more serious excercises and discussions in order to explore our group dynamics. During the excersise we learned that fast decisions that need to be taken because of the time limit very often exclude opinions of minorities. Strong leadership is key to reaching the objectives fast but it is also important for good leaders to know how to make minorities feel heard and accepted. During afternoon we explored and learned what are the different competences that we have or might learn and how they can be organised ss a basis for learning.

In the evening it was time for the fun part. After some delays, our cultural night programme started. At first participants, except Estonia, were briefly introducing their country’s originality and special features. Most of them solved this task with using help of internet - showed promotional videos of their homeland. Of course, the good sides were more emphisized cause everyone wanted to make their country the most attractive, so it was seen from those videos. But it was nice.

Michel talked very interestingly the story about Corsica, how the land was bought by French because Italians were lacked of money. He explained us why Corsicans have this particular flag and the symbol is used also in Sicily. The story was filled with laughter just like all the stories told by Michel.

Michel brought different types of French cheese for us to try, what is only little part of France’s wide cheese variety cause there are near 400 different types of them.

If you wanna go to Corsica one day and don't know where to stay then Michel will be happy to host you. And as we saw from picturese, the view is nice there.

EVELI, STELLA,VAIDA