Global Village: Education, Cultural Exchange and a Chance at Making New Friends

Global Village. Two words, a lot of memories. When I heard about the project, the first thing that came to my mind was the Olympic Village. Just a bunch of cottages in the colors of their residents’ flags. Basically just the Smurfs with different nationalities.

Hey, my name is Alexa, and I am a long term volunteer here at INPRO. As my first short-term project that I was assigned to facilitate, you could say I was pretty nervous. I remember that I went over the first day’s agenda multiple times the previous evening, making sure everything was prepared. Of course, I wanted to be liked, and perform well at this new task. 

From the first Global Village event to the last, this project was nothing short of amazing. I made a lot of unforgettable memories and all the participants I had the chance to meet were lovely. We went to 5 secondary schools in Rzeszów together and had the chance to meet and educate several hundred students about the different nationalities of the world. We had participants from Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Armenia, Cyprus, Greece, France, Spain, Kazakhstan and the United States of America. Through their presentations, they brought their countries to life inside the walls of the schools. 

With my fellow volunteers we facilitated multiple fun workshops for the short term participants. We started with getting to know each other then moved on to the implementation of the core values of the European Solidarity Corps and finished off with reminiscing about our time together. We also paid a lot of attention to reflection and individual development, to make sure each Global Village event went better than the previous one. 

Overall this project gave me countless memories that I look back to happily. I had a lot of fun and made friends with the participants along the way. It was an amazing experience and I cannot wait to facilitate projects again!

Üdvözlettel: 

Alexa from Hungary