TRAINING FOR YOUNG YOUTH LEADERS

Paulo, Joana and me have already returned from the training for young leaders, which took 3 days. It was organised by INNEX and was held in Banská Štiavnica. We had very busy schedule, sometimes I felt lack of free time for some leisure activities :-). But it was a very nice experience for me. The coolest thing was for me to meet people  from different cultural backgrounds and make an inter-cultural exchange with them. The program consisted also outdoor activities, for example on Saturday morning all the team worked hard in the garden.Working team enjoyed and learned how hard is to work in the rain in the morning. Very interesting was also informational block about the first aid. You never know when you will need to use this knowledge tos deal with certain situations which could endanger you or your friends.
On Saturday night we made a night game that was interesting too. The game was about finding information required in the city. During game one of the participants in my group was a guide. The objective was to explore the city. This was very good too, because we knew the city by night through a game. The training was partly in slovak, partly in english, sometimes was difficult to understand everything which was said in Slovak, but Joana help me and Paulo with translation. People who were in training were mostly nice. For me it was very useful weekend full of fun.

ADVANCE PLANNING VISIT FOR YOUTH EXCHANGE

Two weeks back we´ve got a chance to meet group leaders from 4 different countries, who cooperate with us on preparation of our first youth exchange in KcA. Group leader from Hungary (Netta) arrived on Thursday afternoon. We took her from train station in Trenčín and spent some time together. The second person who arrived was boy from Finland (Panu) who came at night. We returned home and continued in talking. After the midnight arrived also a boy from Lithuania (Darius). We spent first day of APV by knowing each other better. All people were accommodated in our volunteer´s flat in Juh. The next day after breakfast I took leaders to KCA where should start APV activities. Lenka and Thomas were waiting for us there. Before afternoon came missing leader from Poland (Michail).

After finishing some activities in the organization, we went to visit the downtown of Trenčín city to become familiar with it. The trip was interesting, we found a man who told us a part of the history of Trencin. After the tour we had dinner and then the night continue in some pub and others go to sleep (I was one of them.)

On Sunday we started early to work, after a long day of presentations and exchanges of ideas, among which were exposed many uncertainties about how to solve problem regarding accommodation, food. Also the discussion was based on what it means to people to be a leader of a group, what are the characteristics that a leader should has had, etc. In my opinion this type of discussion explained people the position of each leader in his/her group and help to make things better.

After these activities, to achieve better integration between the participants were all playing bowling. For other reasons I could not go there. I consider as positive the group with people who are open and able to solve the problems in the best way, always talking. With differences of course, but in any human group differences, it's cool to be able to resolve the differences between all and I think there are no problems in that regard. Having said all this I think the exchange that is in good hands and will be a nice experience for everyone.