29/10-4/11/2017
Águeda, Portugal
Training Course
There has been undoubtedly a crowd applying for this project. I mean, who would refuse an opportunity to visit Portugal and participate such an interesting training?
Fortunately we were the lucky ones who got selected and we got the best out of it! It has been a long journey. We literally flew across Europe, travelling from the eastern point to the western. But the first sight of Portugal promised that it was all worth it and something really nice was coming up… Several hours later when the Cypriot team gathered in Porto after a day in Lisbon, the cooperation and fun factors felt promising. The meeting with the rest of the team wasn’t far. The same night we ended up in Águeda, a small town about 70kms from the capital, where the training would take place for the rest of the week. The next morning we met the rest of the participants. Young people from Estonia, Romania, Lithuania, Macedonia, Portugal and Italy with EVS volunteers from Spain, Germany and Austria joining us later. We spent the first half of the day bonding and we later started working on our objective.
The training was titled “Social Enterpreneurhip: Change Agents” and it aimed to pass to the participants information and good examples of the concept using non-formal education methods. Our trainer Carlos, a profound expert on the topic gave us, through interactive and fun presentations and activities, an inclusive picture of our objective and lead us in realisations and plans for further future implementation. Thought-out the week we enjoyed partying, exchanging cultural information and products and visiting other places and organisations in order to experience social entrepreneurship in practice. On the third afternoon we had three guests who presented their social enterprises in an also interactive and fun way. Trying to get everything in, information and people, places and cultures, the week flew away really quickly and we had to go. We left behind Águeda and the training, but we gained competences and friends that will certainly prove to be life changing in the upcoming future…
