Day 1

On the first day of the project following activities were held:

• Getting to know each other
• Expectations, fears and contributions
• City game

Getting to know each other

This session consisted of several games; purpose of each was to make it easier for participants to remember names and to learn more about each other. For instance, one game required from participants to write their names on a board and tell a story behind the name, while within another game they worked in pairs and filled up the forms about partner's education, interests and dreams. Afterwards they presented it to the whole group.

Expectations, fears and contributions

Each participant was required to write down his/her expectations, fears and contributions regarding the project on separate sticky papers and to stick them on a big format paper. Then three volunteers presented most common issues in each category.

City game

Participants were divided in groups and given tasks, like creating a group name, choreography and art opera, find out certain information about city, making a creative clock, taking pictures with locals and learning how to pronounce several Georgian words. After wandering around the city for 2 hours each groups presented the results of their City rally.

As a result of this game participants saw the sights of the city, gained some information about Kobuleti and simply had great fun

Day 2

On the second day of the project the following activities took place:

• The team building game
• Workshop “Euro-Rail”
• Antidiscrimination workshop
• Intercultural evening

Team building game

Participants were divided into groups and each group was required to make a highest construction with spaghettis and marshmallow.  The purpose of this activity was building a strong team. Each member of the group shared his/her ideas about how to make a highest and strongest construction. Afterwards, every group chose its lieder. The members of the group directed their lieder to finish the path with barriers, while their eyes were closed. The aim of this activity was to learn trusting each other.

Euro-Rail

Participants made a group of two and they choose from a list with whom they would like to travel and with whom they wouldn’t. the purpose of this activity was sharing ideas about people who are in different conditions and to learn not to discriminate people because of their features. After the discussions some of the participants change their ideas about some people who were different from them.

Antidiscrimination workshop

Turkish team made a group of four and asked some questions to the participants regarding majority and minority and about their own experience on the matter. After they answered those questions the team discussed the ideas, which came out of these subjects. The aim was sharing participants own experiences about being discriminated and assessing their feelings and emotions.

International evening

The participants made presentations about their own country by representing videos, showing the general information about the country, traditional dances, traditional food and the landscapes and tourist attractions. Moreover, participants tried to teach each other some of their national dances. Later, representatives of each country hosted the other participants with their traditional food and drinks. The aim of this activity was to learn more about the countries, to connect participants and just to provide the opportunity to taste delicious traditional dishes.

Day 3

On the third day of the program three different activities were held:

·     Discrimination and gender equality

·      Intercultural learning workshop

·      Workshops: disability and cultural diversity.

 Discrimination and gender equality

The activity was a game.  Each participant had his/her social status. During the game, participants had different reactions, like smiling or showing negative emotions.

The aim of the game was to show people`s relationship with each other, stereotypes and stigmas.

 Conclusion: The game highlighted the feelings of a discriminated person.

Intercultural learning workshop    

On this workshop each participant was required to fill up the cultural iceberg picture with easily observable characteristics and the deeper and broader components of a culture. Afterwards, 5 groups, each consisting with the members of the same nationality, made a presentation describing their own culture, emphasizing on their traditions, habits, attitudes and values.

Conclusion:  The participants learned more about cultural differences and discovered common things in completely different backgrounds. Outcome of this workshop was the broaden understanding of a cultural phenomenon.

Workshops: Azerbaijan and Ukraine

-          Workshop Azerbaijan: “People with Disability”

During the workshop were played 2 games having like main objective to empathize with people with disabilities.

The aim of the game was to feel the difficulties that a blind person or a person without a hand has to face in a daily life.

Conclusion: A person with disabilities has more difficult life and he/she needs to be helped in order to be integrated in a society.

  -  Workshop Ukraine: “Cultural Diversity”

         

Thought this workshop, Ukrainian team tried to highlight the problems of a minority in the relation with majority.

In order to arrive at a conclusion, they involved all the participants in a game.

Conclusion: Everyone has to be equal, no matter if it is majority or minority.

Day 4

Participants had the activies as follows:

1. Energizer

2. Derdians

3. Forum theater

4. Human Rights workshop

5. Movie night

1. Energizer: The day started with cool energizer named honey bunny game which was very joyful and fun. Every participant had to imagine a bunny in one's hands and kiss the bunny on a particular part. The next participant should receive the bunny and kiss it in a different place and so on. The important rule of the game is not to kiss the bunny on the same place and everyone should keep in mind where they kissed it. In the end, the participants should kiss the person next to them on the same place they kissed the bunny.

Conclusion: The game was really funny and everyone enjoyed it.

2. Derdians: The facilitator divided the participants in two groups. One group contained engineers, while the other one contained the derdian tribe. The engineers were asked to leave the room and were given instructions on building a bridge from cardboard between two chairs. They were also allowed to use a pair of scissors and some paper duct tape. The engineers were given 10 minutes to build the bridge. Only two of them were selected to reenter the room in which the other group was and were instructed to explain them how to build the bridge that they just built. Derdians stayed in the room and were explained some certain rules that would surprize engineers. The rules were vague and challenging for engineers. They had to guess the traditions of that particular tribe so that to be able to build the bridge.

Conclusion: Every community has its own differences and specifics. Before visiting an unkown society its better to make a small research about their traditions and taboos.

3. Forum Theater: Georgian team presented to participants a forum theater. The main idea of the theater was to focus on the problems and to solve it with the audience. The spesific thing about the forum theater is that the audience itself took part in the play.

Conclusion: The idea was to put yourself into someone else's shoes and show some empathy to others. It was good life lesson to everybody.

4. Human Rights workshop: The Romanian team prepared the workshop which was based around the ability of each participant to enact a character. The character range was from dicriminated minorities to wealthy business man. They all had to line-up and some questions were asked to them. For each affermative answer, the participants had to make a step forward and for each negative answer they had to stay still. The idea was to identify themselves with the character and provide some information from their countries (related to prostitution, emigrants, gypsies, refugees etc.). At the end, a short video was presented about the atrocities that happend in the recent history in which the human rights were not respected (great famine from Ukraine in the '30s).

Conclusion: Each participant had a chance to imagine themselves as minority in the their own countries. They showed some empathy to the charachter they represented.

5. Movie night: The participants watched the movie named Intouchables.

Day 5

Participants went on a trip to Batumi. First, they visited Batumi Botanical Garden and then went on sightseeing in the city. In the evening they had a traditional Georgian dinner in a restaurant, where they listened to Georgian folk music and saw traditional dances performed by Georgian participants of the program. As a result, they found out more about Georgian culture and just had a great fun.

Day 6

On the last day of the youth exchange project five different activities were held:

• Future project development
• Presentation of Youth in action and Erasmus +
• Youthpass ceremony and final evaluation
• Farwell party

Future project development

Participants were divided into three groups. Each group had a different 
task. First group should create a poster, second – video and third – hand book, that should have represent the main idea of the project. The poster group painted 5 skeletons (Georgian, Turkish, Azerbaijani, Romanian, Ukrainian) with identical body structure but different face expressions, showing that despite of nationality all the humans are the same. The video group presented two videos that contained strong messages against discrimination. As regards third group, they created hand book which provided information about the minority groups that were most likely to experience discrimination in each representing country.

Presentation of Youth in action and Erasmus +

Organaisers presented Youth in action and Erasmus + programs. Showed participants special videos and answered their questions. In addition they provided participants with usefull web-addresses, where they can see the detailed information about the programs.

Youthpass ceremony and final evaluation

On the youthpass ceremony participants awarded each other with a youthpass document. Afterwards they evaluated the whole program, by expressing their opinion and filling out special evaluation forms.

Farwell party

Farwell party was a last opportunity for participants, within the project, to spend some quality time together and strengthen their bonds of friendship, before saying goodbye to each other.