Youth Exchanges

Youth exchanges are more than just a few days away from home. They’re a moment when young people from different countries come together, spend time with each other, and start seeing the world from perspectives they didn’t have before.

In Rzeszów, we host participants who often meet for the first time. They come from different backgrounds, speak different languages, and bring different experiences with them. But it usually takes only a few days for those differences to fade into the background.

Our exchanges typically last between five and seven days and are designed for people aged 18–25. Each project has its own theme, but the way we work remains similar. It’s all based on non-formal education, meaning workshops, discussions, teamwork, and activities that require participation rather than passive listening.

Each group includes both local participants from the Podkarpackie region and young people coming from abroad with our partner organisations. They live together throughout the project, share meals, and spend most of their time as one group. It’s often in the in-between moments, outside the structured sessions, where real connections start to form.

Intercultural evenings are an important part of every exchange. This is when participants present their countries in the most direct way possible through food, music, and conversation. No formal presentations, just sharing.

Participation in our exchanges is free of charge, as the projects are funded by the European Union. Travel, accommodation, and all programme activities are covered. Each year, we organise several exchanges in Rzeszów, with around 25 participants in each group coming from different countries.

If you live in the Podkarpackie region and would like to join a project, the best way is to follow our social media channels, where we publish current open calls. We most often invite people who are already engaged in our local activities.

If you are from the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Slovakia, or Hungary, participation happens through partner organisations in your country. They are responsible for recruitment and preparing the groups:

Youthfully Yours SK – Košice, Slovakia
Uzhhorod National University – Uzhhorod, Ukraine
Mustárház IITI – Nyíregyháza, Hungary
Brno For You, z.s. – Brno, Czech Republic

Similar exchanges are also organised by our partners abroad. This creates opportunities for participants from Podkarpackie to join projects in other countries and continue the experience in a new setting.

2023-05-26

Youth exchanges have something truly special about them. Small groups from different countries come together in one place to spend a few days side by side — working on a shared topic, discovering new things and, most importantly, getting to know one another. Sounds beautiful, right?

And yet, before their first exchange, many young people ask themselves the same question:

“What if I can’t communicate?”
“What if my English isn’t good enough?”

Here’s the most important truth about youth exchanges:
English is only one of the languages spoken there.

Participants find thousands of ways to connect — sometimes through words, sometimes through gestures, sometimes through shared laughter. And sometimes… through images.

That was exactly the case during our “Zoom in, Zoom out” exchange, which in April brought together young people from Poland, Ukraine, Hungary and Slovakia. For five days, we explored photography — not to take perfect pictures, but to discover how much can be expressed without saying a single sentence. Because when you tell a story through a lens, you communicate something meaningful, even if you don’t know the exact word for it.

Very quickly, participants realised that a camera can be the best translator. One photo can explain what is difficult to put into words. It can highlight a social issue. Capture an emotion. Ask a question that stays with you long after you’ve seen it.

And that’s exactly what happened. Young people from four countries created photographic stories and later presented them at an exhibition at the Podkarpackie Innovation Centre. Each frame was different, yet they all spoke the same language — the language of sensitivity, curiosity and the desire to understand the world.

Beyond photography, there was also time to discover traditions, tastes, habits and — perhaps most importantly — each other. Shared meals, conversations, cultural evenings, small and big discoveries. Like every exchange, it was a beautiful kind of chaos that, in the end, came together into something bigger.

And it all started with one simple idea:
that it’s about finding a way to understand one another.

Not necessarily in perfect English. Not necessarily through words.

Sometimes a photo is enough. Or a look.

And suddenly, language barriers turn out to be much smaller than we imagined.

The project was funded by the European Union under the Erasmus+ programme.

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