The Youth Exchange “Make Yourself More Employable” has been a valuable experience for all of us. We think that it has given us a lot of things that we’ll share with you now. We also wanted to mention a few improvements that can be made in future exchanges.
On one hand, the most valuable thing for us was to be able to coexist with people from all over Europe. From the moment we met the other participants, we noticed how friendly, open and respectful they were of our cultural differences. The fact that we all came from different countries, all of us with different native languages, forced us to communicate in English at all times. This experience has helped us to practice English and to be more confident while speaking it.
We also wanted to give a special mention to our instructors: Aneta and Mattheus. They were friendly and professional with all of us. Both of them made sure that all the activities were dynamic and fun, while also sharing with us valuable advice about job searching. But not only that, they made us feel like our opinions were heard and valued, which we appreciate.
On the other hand, the relationship between the Spanish Team was always great. Thanks to that, we were able to help and give support to each other during the exchange. We are also really grateful that we got to taste and discover Polish cuisine, thanks to the awesome catering team that we had in the hostel. We also had a day trip to Katowice, which allowed us to discover the city where we were doing the Youth Exchange.
Regarding the improvements mentioned above, we wanted to underline two points: the first is that we were really surprised to discover that the neighbourhood we were destined to was a bit isolated. The second point has to do with the schedule during the exchange. Although we appreciated all the organisational effort that they made, we think that there wasn’t enough resting time. We suggest for future exchanges that they allocate more resting time after lunch (it was just 1h and 30 minutes to eat and rest), or more free time during the evening to rest from all the activities.
In conclusion, we can confidently say that this Youth Exchange “Make Yourself More Employable” has been an amazing experience that has helped us discover new cultures and meet amazing people.
31/08/2021, Katowice 2021
Andrea Camacho, Álvaro Díaz, Akane
Lahuerta, Anna López i Mariam Zahri