My name is Eglė, and I‘m from Lithuania, Klaipėda. In the end of September till 07 of October, I had the opportunity to participate in Polish-Lithuanian youth exchange project “Create The Unity” as one of the 12 representatives of Lithuania and I discovered more things that I was actually expecting. The main goal of the project „Create The Unity” was to familiarize participants with the meaning of tolerance, integration community building with people with visual impairment. The project took place in Poland, near Zakopane town, in a village Murzasichle. It was an amazing place for living and exploring. Murzasichle is in the middle of Tatra National Park, so every morning you could see the Tatra Mountains from your room balcony. It was so amazing and relaxing for me.
In this project, there were 15 people from Poland and 12 people from Lithuania. This project was an incredible experience for me, because all week I worked with people who have disabilities and we, Lithuanians together with Polish team, tried to build nice atmosphere and nice team, who can work together in different workshops.
In this project I had a few big workshops, for example, Lithuanian and Poland teams created the flashmob in Zakopane town, we did orienteering competition in our village Murzasichle, and we worked in Polish school with kids and teenagers.
The most I liked was a workshop orienteering competition in our village Murzasichle. It was a kind day with history because I learned about Murzasichle, I read the history of this village, I read the history of Zakopane region, I learned about national Zakopane region tool – „ciupaga”. It was the most interesting workshop for me because I learned about the region where I lived. During the orienteering competition, I met tourists from Zakopane, I talked with them, I worked in my group with people from Lithuania and Poland, and we became a strong team.
Another workshop what I liked was flashmob in Zakopane. But first on this day, we were in Mountains, and it was amazing. In the beginning of this day, we were in Tatra National Park till to our finish where we saw the waterfall; we walked about 40 minutes in total. The view was amazing; you could see trees and mountains anywhere you look. It was a rainy day but the weather made atmosphere more magic. In this Tatra National Park, there were a lot of small rivers that always were near to us. After this trip to the Mountains, we walked to Zakopane town. It took about one hour because we walked around the Mountains, but then we were in Zakopane we started to do our flashmob. Our flashmob was the idea of finding street passers, to speak with them, to ask maybe they want to be a volunteer in our flash mob and to try their level of confidence/trust, passing a passer-by the touch of a finger. Actually, I was very hard to find people whose want to join our group and to try be a volunteer but we looked the person who had a friendly face, had a few free minute, just play with us. Obviously, the flash mob was very successful, and this flashmob result was, that some people trust us, some not, some felt scary, some felt that they just playing a game and that‘s it, but our project creates the unity with this game – using flashmob we wanted to show to everybody that confidence is very important for people who have disabilities or is blind.
The most difficult part for me in this project was working with the people I don‘t really know, and the people who have difficult disabilities. It was a really hard challenge for me but like I said, I learned so much, I was actually not expecting about. Of course, some of the participants were really active and energetic, some were a bit shy because maybe it was the first time in the project with different people, some didn‘t speak English, or maybe were scared to speak in English near friends. When I met people from Lithuania, we already were like a team, because people from Lithuania were very motivated participants, and our group leaders were very nice, kind and trusted of us, so we already were a strong team. When I met Polish people, I was a little bit stressful, because it was the first time, when I met people who have disabilities, for example, some people have autism syndrome, some people totally blind, but after one week, after our all workshops and works together, in the end our project we became a team.
All in all, I want to say Thank You to the organization Inovacijų biuras (Innovation Office), that invited me and gave me the opportunity to participate in this project. This project helped me to understand that all people, although they are very different, they can work together, live together, create together. After this project, I grew up more as a person, who is struggling to solve the problem and find a compromise in work with different people. As I see it, during this project I learned more than I was expecting to, and new experiences for me means so much, and these achievements are more personal than professional.
I want to go to Zakopane!
And to Klaipėda, too!