Dall’11 al 21 novembre 2024, 42 giovani partecipanti internazionali si sono incontrati a Sarata Monteoru e Buzau, in Romania, per affrontare insieme temi fondamentali legati alla discriminazione delle minoranze. Durante lo scambio, gli obiettivi del progetto sono stati raggiunti attraverso attività creative e stimolanti:
- Promuovere il rispetto per l’inclusione e la diversità.
- Sviluppare competenze per prevenire e combattere la discriminazione.
- Creare soluzioni pratiche per favorire l’inclusione delle minoranze nelle comunità locali.
A seguire, un breve scritto del gruppo italiano:
‘’When sorrow turns to pain’’
Thanks to Scambieuropei and Asociatia Hair Redivivus from 11-21 of November 2024 we have had the opportunity to live an intense learning experience which helped us increase our intercultural knowledge. Through daily activities and workshops organized by our facilitator Tolea, we were able to work in groups and exchange opinions on the delicate themes of discrimination and inclusion of minorities.
This particular setting increased our ability of team-working, but it also meant adapting and learning to listen and to understand different practices and ideas about the world. Discussing differences proved to be useful to comprehend how such topics – discrimination, inclusion of minorities – central to the project, are understood and dealt with in different countries.
Group work was implemented throughout the whole project, as well as a participative decision-making process that allowed us to always express our opinions and give feedbacks to each other.
At the end of the day, in that beautiful location, plenty of space was available to organize other get-together and playful activities, some of those being “intercultural nights”, where each national group presented their country and offered the others a taste of it. On a different day, we also had the challenge to present another partner country – Turkey in our case. In a few minutes, we had to condense a culture not too far from our own, but of which we knew very little up until that moment.
One of the most interesting activities, where the theme of discrimination intersected with playfulness, was an interactive theater called forum theater. The actors wrote the script themselves and then performed on the last day in Buzau in front of a group of high school students. Both plays dealt with discrimination and violence: the first concerned discrimination on religious and sexual orientation-basis, the second was the story of an alcoholic father whose addiction ends up ruining his family. Each group of actors had to play twice and during the second time, the public was encouraged to come up on stage to try and solve the problem to avoid the tragic end.
Even though we have been in the same first location for eight days, we also had the opportunity to interact with the locals. The “village bound” activity was a storytelling one, centered Sarata-Monteoru villagers, which we interviewed to know about their typical day and what it means to live there.
As a result of these ten days, we feel an increased awareness of our active role as citizens of Europe and of the world. The possibility of addressing certain issues with people from different places has broadened our vision of the diversity characterizing Europe, but also of the values that bring us together.
Italian team,
Martina Gaudino
Mario Casatelli
Giulia Costantino
Michele Canosa
Denisa Catalina Nadejde
