“UPGRADE” inBakuriani-Youth Exchange in Georgia

The second Youth Exchange within the project UPGRADE was organized From 20th of February until 1of March, in Bakuriani Georgia.  Participants of the project were youth from 16 to 20 years old from Sweden, Estonia, Poland, Ukraine and Georgia.

Main aim of the youth exchange was to ensure the safe and diverse  international environment for youth, where they will get familiar with the non-formal education, its tools and how to plan and run the non-formal educational activities for their peers. 

The first day of the youth exchange was organized by the youth leaders and it included team building activities, role plays in order to open up the space for sharing and to let youth get familiar with each other, break the ice and to form  the group.  The following days were dedicated to final preparation of workshops and in total youth had delivered fifteen workshops during the Youth Exchange. The topics of workshops were designed by youth and they were following: Ecology and design, Healthy lifestyle, Public Speaking, Creative Thinking, Social Media, Equality, Children’s Rights, Dancing workshop, Communication through music, Global Challenges, To be a leader and Team Working, Power Games, Photo and Video workshops. Through this experience together with planning and running workshops, they needed to be focused, creative and to create space for brainstorming and interactive learning for other peers.

Together with workshops participants were introduced to the Erasmus + programme, it’s main directions in the field of youth and provided the space for them to ask the questions and get more concrete information about activities they can participate in or initiate by themselves.

In order to bring cultural dimension to the exchange, each evening participants were organizing the cultural evening to present their countries, their cultures, history and cuisine. Even more, in the furtherance of knowing local attractions they had one day excursion and visited Borjomi, which is the resort town in Samtshe-Javakheti region of Georgia and produced famous  Borjomi Mineral Water during Soviet times; Green Monastery which was built in 9th century and rehabilitated in XXth century; and Rabati Castle, medieval fortress built in 9th century  and reconstructed in 2011.

In general, youth exchange was a combination of educational, leisure time and sightseeing activities, which ensured the diversity character of the project and opened up space for the different knowledge and skills as for youth as well for youth leaders.