The Made in You(th) has been a project about the promotion of European values using non-formal education activities using tools such as theatre, dance or singing, among others.
It took place in Austria, in the town of Klaffer, near Linz. The countries that participated were Austria, Czech Republic, Turkey, Portugal, Romania, Croatia, Italy and us, Spain.
On the first 2 days of the project we focused on working with activities to get to know each other, as well as team dynamics in order to familiarize ourselves with the rest of the participants and catching up confidence when speaking in English and participating and organizing activities.
From here, we focused on working on European values. One of the goals was to identify which are the values of the European Union as well as to see what values we share with the rest of the people, individually and as national teams.
At the beginning the activities were organized by the project’s trainer team. Later on, the used methodology was to organize workshops in national teams.
In these workshops, each team chose an European value they wanted to promote as well as an activity for the rest of the participants to prepare and make a reflection on all European values.
The fact that we had the possibility to work on this from the perspective of each of the countries was a very enriching experience. We used theater and games, among many others artistic tools.
On the last 2 days, we all were ask to create a 30-40 minute presentation in 4 different groups. Each group had a different artistic tool to work with: theater, dance, art and singing.
Despite not having much time to do it, the final presentation of the project was very rewarding because we could see how all the people wanted to contribute to make a presentation that reflect on the European values, as well as the great dynamics that we had developed between us, the participants.
A very important aspect that we would like to highlight is the organization of intercultural nights. For each day of the project, a country organized a presentation that usually included local food but also videos, dances, karaoke and even traditional clothes.
The fact that every day was a different country motivated us a lot willing to do it well and also share our culture, dance, art, etc. This helped us to know the other’s countries, and also wishing to visit them. It motivated us to sing and learn dances we didn’t know. Every day was a trip!
We are very happy to have been able to participate in this project and to have had the opportunity to meet incredible friendships that we take with us and we hope to meet again.
Without doubt, having the opportunity to participate in other exchange projects as well as trainings would be a great opportunity and pleasure. We want more!
Sheila, Emma, Gabi, Pol, Ramon, Paula