Internationaler Trainingskurs “EUthiopia – Europe we want”, November 2013, Požega, Croatia

At the beginning of November the Croatian Sports Association of Deaf Nova Gradiška (Udruga Gluhih i Nagluhih Nova Gradiška, http://www.ugng.hr) organized the international Training CourseEUthiopia- Europe We Want in Požega where we send three participants to the Training Course. It was funded by the Youth in Action program. In the following you find some impressions of Tina.

Nothing is impossible! These three words became our group’s motto since one of the activities we did got the name Mission Impossible. Our lovely trainer Desiree Pelliccia gave us five different tasks: translating a sentence in as much anguages as possible – at least 10 – , inventing a group dance choreography, creating a work of art, finding a motto for the project and obtaining a typical Croatian drink. We got 30 minutes for everything and….we were successful!

During these eight days we had a lot of fun and learned a lot about the project’s subject – European citizenship – and intercultural learning processes as well. I think I gonna talk about two more activities I enjoyed a lot: a trip to a small village and a game about interpersonal values.

The small village Stara Kapela is about twenty minutes away from Požega. We went there by bus. First we visited the old place where the traditional Croatian way of life is still tried to be maintained. It was amazing: the village was really small, with cute houses, a public well and all people we met were quite friendly. Before the dinner we followed a little trail which lead us to the top of a hillock where we got an overwhelming view to the stunning beauty of Požeška Gora’s slopes and where we got the possibility to see an impressive sunset. When it was over, we went to a restaurant. There we were served a typical Croatian meal and there was a band playing regional music for us. We spent a nice time dancing and talking with regional people. That was the best way to make us realize what European citizenship means: people from different countries coming together to collaborate and to overcome limits and stereotypes we might have had before. The last activity I’d like to focus on is a game we played to get an impression of how different people might be and how important it is to discuss about values. Desiree told us a story about a girl who wants to visit her boyfriend who lives in an almost unreachable place. There are a lot of complications which finally bring her to a point where she has to make a decision on values. Love? Friendship? Honesty? How can we get to where we want to go to without neglecting any ‘good’ value? What is good? What is bad? It was unbelievable how different our opinions were and how well and close goodness and immorality interact. We realized that we’re all unique but that we still belong together. United in diversity was one of the conclusions we got out of this training. Now enjoy the video our amiable friend and photographer Neven Petrovićmade for us:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQFXdO1sqsQ .