Romania: Ana-Maria Drăgoi
Project Coordinator, Cultural Association Branart
Poverty, religion, discrimination, health, education, housing, skills… divides us. But……social inclusion can unite us. Inclusion calls on us to strive for a nation in which everyone lives with purpose, dignity, satisfaction and hope. We have all considerable potential to improve our understanding of social issues and policies. Social inclusion must be for all the people something positive to support, not something negative to oppose. Social inclusion is a new and evocative term that could build understanding. The concept of social inclusion has the advantage of situating individuals in a social and relational context. Social inclusion is a picture – we must all give what we know about public understanding of inclusion. Our role to play in addressing the problem of social inclusion is to find solutions to increase social inclusion. By realizing this project I want to bring a new approach based on the idea of social inclusion and on the potential breathe: to bring a new life into our shared efforts and make it possible for us to accomplish our goals regarding the social inclusion.
Turkey: Koray, Orkun, Melike
During the training course named “Social Inclusion can unite us” which took place in Romania in a beautiful city Craiova between 14.06 to 25.06 we did a lot of activities to encourage especially young people to be more active in a social life. We prepared three sessions, one took place in a prison for youngsters, the second was to activate blind Romanian people and the last but not least one was at school with Romanian and Roma children. For us this last session was the most important one and the most effective. We went two different schools, one was ordinary school for Romanian kids and the other was a gipsy school. Because of these two schools we saw a lot of differences between them. The first school was very ordinary school and communication between pupils and teachers (also us) was much formal than in a gipsy school. In a gipsy school kids were more enthusiastic and more energetic. They were not afraid of us, they were hugging us, touching as, trying with communicating with us especially with a body language because we did not know Romanian language. One gipsy kid named Albert showed us a neighborhood and his family welcomed us in their house. Consequently as we can say it was a perfect social inclusion. About the rest of other sessions we also enjoyed a lot a time in a prison. Actually we were the ones (with other participants) who prepared some activities for prisoners. It was our first time in doing such a thing, so as we can say it was a great experience and adventure for us. To be honest we did some mistakes in organizing activities, because we had no time for everything and because of that we felt confused. But thanks to that we learnt a lot how to be more prepared for unexpected situations. We are also very sad because we spend not enough time with prisoners. If we would have more time with them, everyone would be much more happy and our activities much more effective. We hope that there will be another project focused much more on the prisoners. The session with blind people was also touchy for us because they were very positive and open minded more than we expected. It was our fist time to meet with blind people and because of that we did not know what to expect but the integration part was very easy, the activities were funny and effective and we felt that because of our participation we can change others lives. In general to sum up every experience that we had in this training course we can upgrade and use in our normal life in our country.
Romania: Mihai, Cristiana, Ileana, Patricia, Ariadna, Marian
During 14-25 June 2012 in Craiova the project ‘’Social inclusion can unite us’’ financed by European Commission through the program Youth in Action implemented by Branart Cultural Association, gave us the opportunity to know and interact with participants from Italy, Turkey, Slovakia and Poland. The activities that we all made together as a team consisted in finding solutions to combat ‘’social exclusion’’. The theoretic parts were combined with the practical ones in a constructive way as: a visit at the minor prison where we interacted with convicted persons with age between 14-21 years old, another visit at the blind people center and also at a rroma children school from Craiova and also Rîmnicu Vâlcea. Inside all this visits we managed to achieve all the important goals learned during the training courses through all kind of activities, non-formal education and games. The steps of intercultural learning helped us to understand better the various definitions of social inclusion. Also this project familiarized us with the steps one should know and do for initiating a project like this one. Within the work session at the rroma children school in Rîmnicu Vâlcea we applied the methods learned in the training course and also we visited the rroma people’s houses in order to see their living conditions. On the way we also visited important cultural touristic objectives as: Manastirea dintr-un lemn (The monastery made from a single wood), Manastirea Cozia (The Cozia monastery), Muzeul Satului (The village museum). The theme evenings as: Romanian, Italian, Polish, Slovakian and Turkey cultural evenings were a good way to learn more about each tradition, country, dances, customs and kitchen. To put it briefly, it was a great experience from witch we all had many things and methods to learn and apply in our communities and why not in our daily life.
Poland: Kinga and Anita
Romania, Craiova, 14 th- 25th of June 2012- a very important date for people interested in societal problems and needs in Europe. A training course organized by Cultural Association Branart entitled ‘Social inclusion can unite us’ aimed at making the project site where five permanent partners will post articles and events taking place in five countries (Romania, Poland, Italy, Turkey and Slovakia) on social inclusion. The main objectives of our everyday sessions were creating a handbook with methods and solutions that can first of all rise people’s awareness regarding social problems, secondly find probable solutions and lastly apply them into practice. The teams were trying to implement their ideas in three socially excluded groups, namely prisoners, blind people and Roma children. All the teams prepared a design with the sessions they were going to make with people with fewer opportunities. The learning objectives of sessions were mostly based on the idea of developing communicational and cooperation skills. What is also crucial especially for young people the ability to respect each other, finding positive results of partnership. In all projects there exist the relation between excluded groups and society. In order to receive positive feedback, support and help from the society there has to exist visible cooperation and mutual respect from both sides. To provide some theoretical framework participants were given many opportunities to get more familiar with Romania and Rroma people. Among tourist objectives of Craiova we had a chance to visit for example Marin National Theatre, The University of Craiova, City Hall and many others. Documentation visits to prison, school, a center for children with fewer opportunities let us to get to know a little bit this unique culture, traditions and habits. The project financed by the European Commission, Youth in Action Program with the principal activity regarding social inclusion theme promoted mutual understanding in which there shall be no distinction of race, nationality, sex, religion, color, class or political opinions. The activities purpose was to bring together social, educational and cultural objectives to create opportunities for social interaction, to develop relationship to experience culture and non-formal education and to learn new skills for the participants as direct beneficiaries and for the local communities from the five countries as indirect beneficiary. We honestly believe these objectives were achieved and now we can pass our experience back in our homeland.
Italy: Michele, Elena and Monique
From Italy to Romania. A surprise journey. We left Italy on june 14th, and arrived in Bucarest, then we took the train for Craiova. The first impact was particular: the bus driver did not want to wait for us…, Gara de Nord in Bucarest seemed like a market…, a very nice girl helped us to buy the train tickets. From Bucarest to Craiova: watching from our windows the country seemed undeveloped, like fifty years ago in Italy, but it was strange to see many probes of oil. Finally we arrived in Craiova and we started for our social inclusion. We were in an Italian restaurant…, we were like at home…
During our Training Course we were five groups of five different ages, and different countries: Romania, Italia, Slovakia, Poland, Turkey. Our course was an important chance to integrate also us very well in the real life of Romania. We knew different kinds of people with social problems: young prisoners of a jail, blind people and rroma children. Often we listen discriminatory sentences about prisoners, and gipsy people, but we wondered that these persons were more opened in the mind than us. They did not judge us: the prisoners were happy to work with us and to play music and theatre for us, and also the Rroma children were friendly, glad, lovely with us and curious to know us. Some of the gipsy may us enter in their own house. Also blind people were happy to meet and stay with us.
After this experience we learn that perhaps it is easier than we can think to integrate with each other person. It is enough a song, a dance, a game, eating together at the same table, or just a little smile. We often forgot that we have to live the experience before speaking about it, because the world has lot of faces. We have to remember that is important thinking without stereotype.
And we sing together: Social Inclusion
Is not to stay alone on the top of a tree,
Is not also a flight of mosquito,
Is not to have an opinion,
SOCIAL INCLUSION IS PARTICIPATION
