Training: A Way to Grow

Date 5th June 2018 Author saras Category Activism, People and life-style, Youth

Non-formal education is a very good tool for young people to raise their capacities; helping them to gain skills, e.g. to compete on the labor market, to be more open-minded about other people, but also to feel better as individuals.

I would like to share with you my last two experiences from training-courses that I have been part of. The first training was “The Roma Youth Advocacy Training” takinge place in Brussels (Belgium) from 6 to 12 April and the second one “Take your job” taking place in Kusadasi (Turkey) from 5 to 11 May. I am writing this article, because I would like to share with you how the networking and interaction with other people can help you improve yourself!

As most of the time training-courses include “learning by doing” activities. The trainers, for example, will work on a topic with you and ask you to find a solution, if it is a problem, or give your opinion about something specific. The result of this leads us to plan our approach with certain structure in mind, something that is very important on the labor market, because we have to be specific when we talk about our job. Moreover, a lot of the time, we need to do a presentation; I can confirm that this is something that pushes you out of your comfort zone, because you always end up speaking in front of many people. «The comfort improves the people, contrast the pressure up to one degree brings the improvement» psychologists say. Furthermore, the people who meet in these courses can help us in the future. For example, during my last training I met a guy who is very good in making short movies. I asked him to give me his opinion and comments about the videos that I also want to make. Moreover, I went to the second training because a friend of mine from the first training course told me about it.

In addition to what i was experiencing in these two courses, i was also able to met almost 80 people from 20 countries… people from all over Europe: Central, North, South, Balkans and Turkey. I had the unique opportunity to interact and understand about different cultures, but also let my stereotypes play a bit with myself, for example, most of the Turkish people smoke, hence the connection with a proverb that says you smoke like a Turk 🙂 This is not a characteristic of their culture, just an example 🙂  I would like also to mention that in these courses I met a lot of people from F.Y.R.O.M. and Turkey. I am from Greece, so these two countries are the “Political enemies” of my country. I am very happy because I realized that people do not hate me because I am from Greece or pursue the political agenda of their countries. Most of them care for Thanasi as person and not where I am coming from. Of course, you can also find people that don’t like you or people that you don’t like, but I guess it is something usual and individually based.

The last, but not least thing i would mention is the friendships that I have established in these courses, but also the memories that are very special for me. These courses helped me to have friends from across the globe. The opportunity to travel to different countries to visit and see them again, personally makes me feel very happy about it, especially when people tell to me that I can visit them in their countries. Because, I feel that those people really enjoy my company. Moreover, I have kept a lot of special memories from these trainings, memories that are exceptional for me, because they make me feel amazing.

To summarize, training-courses can be useful because they’re there to help us improving our skills,  raising our knowledge and becoming successful in our work but, the things that make us to feel nice is when we are remembering the simple things like, swimming in the night, a dance, a smile and this is the most important for me, simply feeling nice and fine.

Hope to see you again somewhere around the World.

Keep smiling!

Yours,

Thanasis

Tags: #erasmus+ #training #Romaweek2018, #people #learning #smile