Thanks to the Fundació Catalunya Voluntaria, Adriana, Laia, Pau, Pol and Yury we have had the opportunity to travel to Greece, through the Thessaloniki area, specifically to the village of Stratoni. It has been a Youth Exchange project based on the development of communication and media tools.
The Catalan group arrived in the village tired of a day thatwas full with travelling and layovers, bearing in mind that we also visited Vienna with our backpack and both f: “fe y fotos” where we made a sufficiently full visit during the short time we had. However, once in town, after dinner, we could not resist the temptation to swim on the Greek beach, to get rid of the weight of the day, thus starting to establish a bond of trust between us without being too aware of it.
Over the next few days, we had a series of activities to get to know each other between all the national groups: Turkey, Greece, North Macedonia, Croatia, Lithuania, Italy and Spain, so that we would soon create a pleasant working environment.
We had the opportunity to discover elements of journalism from professionals and other disciplines that volunteers taught us, as well as radio, photography, video mounting, graphic design and a workshop dedicated to social media.
Apart from this theoretical knowledge, we also learned from breathing the atmosphere and living in the village the way how they lived and how they talked about Tzatziki, Greek Feta cheese and its large olives, among other things, although we agree that we would not highlight menu as a positive aspect from the whole trip, and as well as learning other cultures, customs and ways of living from partners of the youth exchange.
Towards the end of the project we had to prepare the video clip of a song for each country as a kind of Eurovision under the name “Divavision”, thanks to Paul’s video editing skills and the grace of our team we managed to win the popular vote contest, thus demonstrating that our team stole the choir from the rest of the participants.
We are very grateful to have been part of this project towards the Fundació Catalunya Voluntària, to the Greek organizer Claire, to Elena for managing, to the Spanish volunteer team who were a great helping hand and in general to the Catalan team for the experiences.
