Secret Santa

"With the approaching holidays, before even the project starts we dicede that it would be so nice if we bring with us a little present from our country for someone here, just becouse Christmas is coming!!

At the evening of day 5 we have our "Secret Santa" event. No one knows what present would recive, and there was no chance for anyone to receive a gift from his nationality friends, so at the end every one get a gift from a different nationality. It was really funny, amazing and its only one time in a life to exchange presents with exactly with this people!"

"When it comes to Erasmus+ during late December, the Secret Santa is everyone's favourite activity. The preparation of the gift and the receiving both bring equal amounts of joy.

Amongst the presents one could find national sweets, flutes, souvenirs and much, much more. As different were the gifts, so were the reactions from surprise to pure joy.

Special thank you to the romanian team, which developed a special system, so no one gets a gift from their national team. An original idea, that worked wonders!

Thank you for the wonderful experience!"

Looking for a job

In this session we were given the task to present the status of the labour market for young people in our country, more specificaly the interest of employers and employees, online and offline soucres for finding a job and the skills and competences that companies are looking for in youngsters.

Each country had its time to present the best way thoroughly the information we already have pepared for homework. 📚

On balance:

Romania - most prefered job positions are in fast food chain restaurants such as McDonald's and KFC, also youngsters can take advantage of partialy volunteering in the army and receive income for their tribute👨‍✈️.

Turkey - 6 months mandatory military service for young adults, but universities are better and more preferable option, progressive tax, turkish people rock 🎓.

Italy - minimum wage ~1100euro, big difference between North and South, various opportunities for interns, brain migrarion🍕.

Spain - differenent regions offer various possibilities for interships with flexible payment acording to the location; + seasonal jobs.

Bulgaria - well-paid jobs are sales assistant and working in call centre; you can make a living from the tips you receive as a waiter, maternity leave - best in Europe💸.

Poland - Poooooland, they have different type of employment contracts and diverse tax policy, if you are under 26, you don't pay taxes. 

Woooo 🎉

We did such a great job! 😊

Pottery Workshop

"Today we went to visit Olari village, and the first impression that it makes me wore "there's ceramic plates everywhere", i asked myself "why..??" It turned out that place was known as Horezu's Pottery village.

We met guy called Mihail Bascu one of the best pottery craftsman there, he present us the history of that village. It also turned's out that this place it's actually included in the UNESCO HERITAGE! He showed us how to do pottery explaining us everything from the shape to the simbols painted in it. Mihail also showed us some of the simbols, like the rooster, tree of life, or the spider web.

After that he let everyone who wanted to make it's own ceramic plate, and it was really interesting especially for me, because i see this for first time!"

by Nikolai (Bulgaria)

"Today we had a pottery workshop. We went to the village called "Olari". We visit Mihai Bascu a true "Constantin Brâncuși" of ceramics. He presented us the history of Horezu Pottery, the only one pottery from Romania that is included in the UNESCO Heritage.

Also, he told us that every material and instrument is natural.

The main symbols of Horezu Pottery are: the Horezu rooster, the peacock feather, the sun, the fish and the snake are also secondary symbols.

In the second part of our workshop, the master Mihai Bascu showed each of us how to make our own plate of ceramics. We had a lot of fun doing it!"

by Alex (Romania)

Youth Unemplyment - lotus blossom activity

Today we start to introduce and speak about youth unemployment. We started with a brain storming to try to understand the causes of youth unemployment. It came out that the motivations are from very different fields and they are so many. From lack of interest from youth, to black market. As always we were split in groups and each group started to analyse a specific field, and to find also any possible solution. Divided in eight teams we needed to contemplate on them and suggest another eight subtopics as a results of the cause and solutions to tackle unemployment.

The first three presentations showed that the topic is more puzzling than what we were expecting. It was very interesting to share our opinions with our groups and try to find out a solution, even if most of them could be abstract.

Motivated and energized we came up with pretty fascinating lotuses, that boosted our teamwork.

The conclusion is that the purpouse of this kind of activity is to raise awarness of the issue and...it worked!

Paperclip Challenge

Today we have activity for group building. We created six teams to play paperclip challenge. 

The game was like that: we had the paperclips and we had to swap to more valuable things from local people. It was successful game because every group did their best!!

We use our body language to communicate with local people because of the language barrier. It was difficult to explain ourselves but we didn’t lose hope while we are making trade😜

All the team managed to exchange something: Christmas ornaments, pencils, pens, cigarettes, an original bracelet, an original and fashion phone case and some old beautiful chairs. It was really funny, challenging and crazy and we think that, if it was for that challenge, we wouldn’t have ever tried it.

Getting to know...

Getting to know each other...

Getting to know our sending organisation...

Getting to know about Erasmus+...

More to come! Keep tuned!

EXPECTATIONS, FEARS & CONTRIBUTIONS:

Traditionally one of the first activities during the project was sharing everybody's expectations, fears and potential contributions. All participants expect to learn more about the unemployment situation all over Europe, have fun, explore Romania and gain more intercultural experiences.

Some of us think that this exchange will bring them many benefits in their future job-seeking.

Regarding to the second category- the fear of tarantulas was the dominating one / a Polish participant collects huge spiders. Some people are pretty uncertain of their English skills and their ability to express themselves. However, all of us agreed that there is no reason for fear on an Erasmus+ project.

The contributions mentioned were various and interesting. Most of us are eager to share knowledge about our home countries, gain useful experience and keep our positive attitude in the whole process.

HOUSE RULES:
So during the making of the house rules we were separated into 6 teams. Each team had to come up with 5 rules for everyone in the span of 10 minutes. After that the groups took turns to present their ideas and we decided which of the rules are most important.

This exercise proved to be effective because of the big role that the participants took in inventing the rules, which lead to better understanding of their importance.

REFLECTION TIME:
Since all the days are filled with activities and opportunities to work together and build connections,at the end of the day we need some reflection time to think about how the time passed. First of all, they gave us an envelope containing some documents the individual reflection time paper and the individual envelopes. After we filled the documents we took “few minutes to let our mind wonder”.

Moreover, we decorated our individual envelopes in a creative way, personalizing them with our names hoping that they will be filled with some kind messages.

Finally, we stayed in our national teams exchanging feelings and ideas about the first day and also finishing our NGO presentation.

Find out about Youth Exchange!

The "Career Explorers" project is a multilateral youth exchange organized under E+ framework, to be held in Horezu, Romania, between December 11 and December 21st, 2019 (including travel days). 

The purpose of the project is to increase the level of knowledge, attitudes and skills (to know how to write a resume and cover letter, to know how to apply for a job or how to act at a job interview, etc.) and how to become active on the labor market for 36 young people aged 18- 30 and 6 group leaders (without age) from the 6 participating countries (Bulgaria, Italy, Poland, Spain, Romania and Turkey) for a period of 9 days.

The objectives of the project are aligned with the E+ objectives:

- Support young people to acquire skills that aim at their personal development, but also to increase employment opportunities on the labor market. Following the project, P will take concrete steps to find a job.

- Increasing employability and improving career prospects for young people. Discussions on how to choose a proper career, analysis based on personality tests and personal experiences will help young people better choose the next job, thus increasing the chances of building a long-term career.

- Through this project we try to respond to the priority: supporting the employability of young people with fewer opportunities (economic, social, but especially NEET).

Non-formal education methods suggested are designed to support the promotion of active citizenship among young people, to develop participatory attitude, to support reflection, tolerance and also the integration of intercultural differences. The non-formal methods included are various; these include verbal and non-verbal communication, visual communication, written communication. 

The youngsters (no team leaders) whom participate in this exchange will also receive at the end of the mobility, the Youthpass certificate, that validates the competencies acquired through the participation in the project activities.

* The Youth Exchange is a project where young people work and live together in an international group for a specific time. It consists of preparation, implementation, and follow-up activities. For the duration of the Youth Exchange, young people undertake a joint programme of activities with specific aims and objectives.

Youth Exchanges foster the mobility of young people in Europe. They encourage initiative and creativity in young people, facilitate their active participation in the project, and thereby provide an intercultural learning experience.