5 reasons to go travel Europe and discover yourself
As told by a participant at a youth exchange
As the warm summer days were disappearing and autumn weather started creeping in, me, like many others, craved to escape under the sun again. However, instead of paying a lot of money to lay at a beach, I decided to take part in a youth exchange called “Art in Action” that took part in Guimarães, Portugal. I’ll now briefly explain the main reasons that made me want to take part in such an experience.
First, youth exchanges are free. This is probably the main reason attracting factor for many as although some programs have a participation fee, the on-site food and accommodation are all paid for and even transport to the destination country is paid for in part (often in full).
Second, Erasmus + projects generally have a lot of people from different countries taking part with whom you can become very good friends in a short amount of time. The programs also expose you to organizations from other countries that you can go volunteer or even work at after the project. A big advantage of finding friends abroad is also that if you ever decide to put on your rucksack and go explore a different country, you already have friends to stay with or who can recommend an area you wouldn’t typically find from a tourist booklet. The project “Art in Action” had people from Estonia, Portugal, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Italy and Turkey. During that short time, I felt that I got to know many people enough to be able to call them my friends and go visit them later on.
Third, you’ll get a very good overview of the local culture and will also get to visit different areas in the country depending on where the project takes place and your own organizational skills. Although we didn’t have the opportunity to leave Guimarães due to the tight program, many other participants had arranged their time and flights so that they could also look around Porto or Lisbon before or after the project. We could, however, taste a lot of local food and drinks during the exchange and since it was all organized by locals, we could really dive into the culture of another country for a week.
Fourth, it’s a great opportunity for self-development in many different areas. If the project you take part in is concerning your field, it’s a doubly good chance to see how things are done in a different country and pick out some ideas to bring back home. To a large extent, such projects are aimed at dealing with helping their local communities through various means, such as the arts, sports, entrepreneurship, etc. Getting to experience how things are done elsewhere and then applying similar methods back at home can lead to some great outcomes. In Portugal, we focused on local social issues and did that by using art. We helped fix up and decorate old bicycles that would then be donated to those in need, worked on building a park for those with special needs (fragrant plants or touchable surfaces for the blind, wheelchair accessible areas etc) and did a photo exhibition of the local refugees. Even if you won’t apply similar techniques later on, it definitely feels good to help and you might still use the knowledge and experiences gained at a different field years later.
Fifth, broadening your horizons and the ability to work with different people. In a rapidly globalizing work, it’s certainly important to be able to see beyond one’s own country and culture. Such programs allow that as when a young person joins a group of 20–30 foreigners at a foreign country to work together towards a common goal, they develop their social skills as well as their ability to work in a group. The outcome of the project all depends on the motivation as well as ability of the participants to adapt and help each other.
