Fifth day of our project

6th March

As usually the facilitators had prepared a good energizer even for this morning. When we  entered the working room we found them waiting for us and with the projector on. After everyone came in the working room the started to explain what we had to do. They asked us to make three straight lines facing the video projector and to choose one of the characters who was going to be seen in the video and we had to fallow their dance moves without getting disturbed by the moves of the other characters. The name of the video was "Dança quadrado" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ktgsn_G59os) and there were three characters really funny ones. Their dance was so funny and active, we were jumping and shaking a lot, in one moment one of the characters stops dancing and starts to bother the other dancers. We started to do the same and this was the most funny part. 

After feeling happy and energized the facilitator divided us in 5 groups and our task was to make a list of the thing we could make with recycled plastic. The facilitator asked us to bring at least 4 different objects that we could make with a recycled plastic and the list of what we would need to make this objects. The facilitator asked us to keep in mind always the model of using less new as possible. Before going to lunch we presented the ideas to the other groups and we had again a small discussion how to make this ideas better. 

Even during the lunch you could see the participants still talking and improving the ideas about the recycled objects. For the after lunch session the facilitators organized 4 cleaning actions and we collected plastic materials around the hotel and in the city. The facilitators provided us hand gloves, face masks and black plastic bags while we were having the cleaning actions. The thing that surprised most of us was that a lot of local people joined our cleaning action and they started to help us, when we told them our action they were so excited that people from different nationalities came in their city and they were cleaning instead of them doing it. They congratulated us for our initiative and they were hoping that even the youngsters of Moldova would be so nice and active as we were. After we finished we went back in the hotel and we started to see and to clean the plastic materials that we collected in our cleaning actions.

Fort the last session, in our previous groups, we started to work on the objects that we had planed to create meanwhile the facilitators were bringing us the missing materials that we needed to create our objects. We worked until dinner time and after dinner, we as a group agreed that we could keep working in our project since we had free night and we had a lot of energy and none of us was tired. We worked for a long time but none of us was going even why the time was going really fast and it was being a little bit late. We were so surprised when we saw that the facilitators joined us. This motivated us even more to achieve our main goal in the best way it was possible. 

Participants started to leave one by one and we all decided to stop the work since it was late at night and to start again tomorrow with new energies and more motivation.

Fourth day of our project

5th March

For morning energizer the facilitators asked us to take a sit and make a circle and to add one more free chair. Than he stood in the middle of the chair explaining the game to us. The point of the game was that the person standing in middle had to take a sit in the free chair but the persons that were siting had to move from the left to the right and not allowing him or her to sit down. In the beginning it seems impossible but when we started to play we saw that it was easier and funnier that most of us thought. We played this game for a while and the other facilitator went to prepare for the other game. When facilitator decide to end this game it was the other facilitator to explain the next game to us. He asked us if we had memorized all the names of the participants because the next game was a name game, just to see if we had learned all the names. He divided us in two big groups and faced us, sitting on the ground, and placed in the middle of us one big blanket so we couldn't see the participants from the other side. Then in total silence he was calling one participant from each side of the blanket to come near and to sit alone facing the blanket. On his mark he was putting the blanket down and the participants had to guess the each other name as fast as they could. When they saw that mostly of participants knew their names they decided to make it funny they started to call two from one side and one from the other, sometimes even three on one or three against two, and this idea brought a lot of smiles and laughs in our group. In the end they were so surprised how the participants knew a lot of names and their fear about getting to know each other and socializing with each other was gone. They told us that now it wasn't necessary anymore to make name games and this was the last one.

Now it was time to get back in our main topic of the project. We arranged the room like a small theater facing the projector, because the facilitators were going to show a video of "The story of the plastic bottle". In this video presentation we saw how the plastic is created and it is ending after it usage and why people choose to use the plastic in their life. The following videos were about alternative ways how plastic can be used and recycled after it usage. Mostly of the videos were focused in the art method of recycling. We saw a lot of creative and useful ways of recycling of the plastic.

For the afternoon sessions the facilitators divide us in groups and we had to make a theater show about the topic the future of our planet and is it really possible Green Life. This way of working was really creative and we saw the creativity of the participants of the project. The ideas about the theater were amazing,really funny and different. In the end we had to make our small performance in front of everyone. We noticed that participants had a lot of potential and ideas about the recycling of the plastic.

For the last sessions we were divided again in different groups and we had now to work more in our topic. We had to write in papers ideas of recycling plastic, what we can recycle and how we can make it better the recycling circle. All of this ideas were presented to the other participants and we had a discussion about this ideas how we can improve and develop some of them.

For tonight again we had Intercultural night, unfortunately the last one but not less important. For tonight it was the turn of Turkey, Romania and Italian participants to surprise us with their food, traditional dances and songs and their national drinks.   

Third day of our project

4th March

Even why we were knowing more and more participants names, it would be still necessary to play one more game. The facilitator asked us to make a circle and with the papers from the previous day he made two small balls. Than he gave the balls to two different participants and asked them to throw the ball at someone else, not from their own nationality, and to call their name while they were throwing the ball in the air. Very fast people started to throw the balls around the working room and repeating our names. We made this game for some minutes and again the smiles and funny part wasn't missing. Participants were throwing the ball around but sometimes calling one name and throwing to someone else. It was nice and funny.

Than the facilitator told us to make a circle again but now with our chairs, meanwhile he was standing in the middle of the circle. He started to divide us in different fruits and he explained us the game. The person who remains in the middle had to call a fruit and all the participants divided into their fruit had to stand up and change their place with someone else. The person who remained again had to call another fruit or to say Fruit salad and in this moment all the participants, regardless to their fruit, they had to change their place. This game was so energetic and creative, the best way to start the day and work in our main topic of the project.

 After the facilitator decided to finish the game they asked us to stand up and to go around the working room like atoms in unregulated way and "crashing" with each other just like atoms moving in space, when the music would stop we had to make groups by the number of participants that the facilitator would say us. We played this until we made five groups in total and the facilitator gave us one topic to work in our small group:

1       1- Ecology 5W?

2       2- Positive examples from all around world.

         3- Negative examples from all around the world.

4       4- Best ecology event in the world.

                 5- How YiA helps for better impact and raising awareness for ecology.

      

     After we finished our group work we had to make a presentation in front of the other participants and sharing the information we could find out with them. The next workshop that we had was, in two groups, to make a sad and a happy story with 10 photographs per each story. This workshop was so nice we enjoyed so much going around the hotel and taking pictures with each other. The next presentation made by the facilitator was about Millennium Development Goals. When he finished the presentation, he divided us in 8 groups and each group had to make a promotional video for one of the Millennium Development Goals. 

     Because some of the groups hadn't finished the video facilitator gave us some more time after the lunch to finish everything and before the last session we saw the videos which were made by us. They contained a lot of information that mostly of us didn't knew. The facilitators were satisfied with us. For the last workshop we had to work in our national teams and to make a flip-chart presentation about our ecology situation in our countries and present them in front of the others. 

     For tonight we had the Azerbaijan, Croatia and Moldova intercultural night. Participants presenting this countries after the dinner started with the preparations of their food and deciding what traditional dances they would show to us. For sure we were going to enjoy this night to.

Second day of our project

3rd March

Today it was the first day of our project and we had different games to know each other, to brake the ice among us and to start to make the group spirit.

The first thing that the facilitators asked us was to stand up in a circle where the participants next to us were not from the same countries. Going from the left side we had to make a presentation of our self, by telling the our name, country and one adjective which starts with the first letter of our name, and then repeating the last three participants name and adjective which made the presentation before us. This game was nice and funny and helped us to remember a lot of names even why with the help of the funny adjectives that participants were connecting with their names.

When everybody finished presenting themselves and the last three persons, the facilitator asked us to make a straight line and asked us in total quiet, without speaking only in nonverbal communication, to arrange our self's in alphabetic order from one corner of the room to the other corner. Which mean that the we had to make e straight line in alphabetic order starting from the persons whose name starts with A and ending to the other side with the persons whose name starts with Z. When we finished we had to tell our names out loud so everyone could hear us and check if we managed to arrange ourselves but this was not the end. Without moving from the line the facilitator asked us again in total silence to arrange ourselves now regarding to our birth day and month. Again we managed to arrange in line without making any mistake and for this the facilitators gave us 5 min of brake. And we noticed that the participants were not staying anymore in national groups as it happen in the previous night but now they were talking with participants from different nationality which made participants happy.

After break we went inside again and the facilitators divided us in two groups and gave us instructions for the next energizer. In our group we had to choose between three characters Princes, Dragon and Hunter each of them presented by a gesture. The point of the game was to chose one character and to win against the other team. The rules were easy:

1- The Princes is kept by dragon inside a castle and can't be free, which means she loses but she wins against the hunter because she was so beauty and the hunter couldn't kill her.

2- The Dragon is so strong and big that he keeps the princes prisoner, what makes him wins against her but he loses against hunter because he owns a gun and he can kill the dragon to release the princes.

3- The Hunter has a gun which can kill the dragon but he can't kill the princes because of her beauty which makes him fall in love with her and this makes him lose.

After the facilitators explained the rules we went into our groups and decided which character we were choosing. Than we were facing the other team and when the facilitator was giving us the sign to go we were making the gesture. The first team who reaches three wins was going to take a  2 min massage from the losing team. This game brought a lot of laughs and positive energy to the group.

When we finished this game the facilitator asked us to take a sit and make a half circle and he presented us the next workshop that we had to make. He gave to each of us post-notes with three different colors. Each of them was presenting a different thing. Regarding to our opinion and thoughts we had to write in each of them what is a good project, good participant and a good facilitator than we had to stick each of them in their representative flip-chart. When everyone finished the facilitator started to read some of them and giving us the main idea what is a youth exchange, for what we were gathered there that it wasn't some kind of vacations or holidays but it was a project funded by European Union and there were some rules that we had to follow. The facilitator gave us the wright message why we came in Vladu Lui Vodi. After he finished making the small presentation about this workshop, the facilitator asked us as a group to make some rules of behavior so we could achieve a good project and to have perfect time in Moldova.

The first rules like to be on time, to respect each other, to speak in English or body language, so no one of us would feel excluded from the group or to respect each other, we (the participants) started to give ideas about the rules that we would like other participants to respect. When we finished the facilitator made the last rule which was to be a team and to enjoy our staying in Moldova he called us to sign the flip-chart in a sign of our approve to respect every rule.

While we were busy by signing our agreement the facilitators were prepared for the next workshop. It was time to divide us in smaller groups in mixed nationalities and to play mission impossible. They gave us 10 tasks where we had to find information about each other, about the hotel, about the place that we were staying and to work as a team. When they finished the presentation of our tasks we were free to go to have lunch and to discuss in our groups about the tasks we had to accomplish. During the rest of the day we were working in our small groups and before going to dinner we had to come back in our working room and to make the presentation of our mission impossible. In the end we found that the point of the game was not to finish the tasks or to be the best group in the presentation but to build the team spirit among us and to know more about the persons we were working for a few hours. This game was a lot of fun and we enjoyed and we were feeling more the good energy among us.

The first day as a big group we can say that it was amazing and everyone enjoyed and was pleased to be part of the group. But the day hadn't finished yet. Tonight the participants from Armenia, Bulgaria and Estonia were going to make the presentation about their countries, cultures, music, daces and cousin. For some of the participants it was the first time to face another culture from theirs and they were so excited and couldn't wait for the night to come.  

Youth Exchange "Be the Change"

02-10 March, Vladu Lui Voda, Moldova

Within eight days exchange the participants will encourage to take part in different non-formal activities and through them to get to know more about different ecological issues as well as about different attitudes of European countries to the main ecological problems as recycling, or looking for alternative sources of energy and the global environmental challenges. The participants will not just take part in discussion or in workshops. They will have and a chance improve their creative skills and together create new art through creative recycling techniques. Besides the ecological workshops and creative recycling activities the participants will have an opportunity to learn about photography and to get to know basic photographic skills, because photography is not just the way how to document the process of change plastic bottles to art piece, but it is also way how to document the life on our Planet, the life which needs to be protect. At the end of the project the participants will have an opportunity to connect ecology, creativity and photography and share their new knowledge through ecological exhibition with local communities of their countries. This project will promote active citizenship of young people and will raise the topic of youth participation. The participants will have a chance to work in intercultural environment. Therefore, they will be able to develop social skills and better understand the cultural differences and will develop tolerance and solidarity.