ONE WORLD YOUTH EXCHANGE PROJECT
FIRST DAY IN A JOURNEY
We’re staying in Palermo, the main town of Sicily, Italy. We’ve seen a small part of the city and it was full of historical buildings and lives on diversity. The buildings belong to Arabic and European cultures, that influenced different architectural style.
For the first day of the program we were lucky to have a friendly group of participants as they have a very good initiative to get to know the others. The participants have been very welcoming and open to the 11 cultures that are present in the youth exchange project. In fact, even if it’s represented by 6 countries, we discovered that participants come from more countries; which is very useful to have more diversity and it will help us reach the aims of the pathway. Our openness was noticed by, for example, the curiosity to learn basics of the different languages.
During the day, we realized that there are many connections among us which helped us to create bonds easier than we do in our everyday lives. We benefited of these links to organize a structured story telling in which 5 participants volunteered to share their experience on discrimination. In this activity each member of the other participants got the chance to break down their stereotypes, share their point of view on the subject and discover that there are similarities of discrimination in every culture.
Who said that people from different cultures cannot live together? And why do we create boundaries which prevent us from spreading love and peace?
P.S. We would be very happy if you share your personal experience on discrimination in the comments on the following link:
https://m.facebook.com/asshryo/
Wiki Blog 24-10-2016:
Today, we started our day wandering around the city. We had to visit places that we have never been to before, and beside the idea we had about the city and the people, we luckily had the chance to realise how helpful, friendly, and kind Palermitans are. We also realised that our bonds are becoming stronger even though its only our second day.
During the workshop on media influence we experienced that media has a positive and negative influence on people. All the different cultural perspectives gave us insight on the level of which we are influenced and made us understand that there are voices that are not heard by the audience. Aside from this we also miss the media stimulating a culture of peace, and we created concepts on how we could influence it in a positive way. We would love to hear more about the positive things in the world.
We also had the chance to witness an empathic situation between a Spanish and a Palestinian guy, and from the experience of the Spanish guy, it really touched him that he is privileged to live such a wonderful life without being aware of what is really happening to lovely people like that Palestinian guy. Its also really wonderful that even without being able to communicate sometimes because we speak different languages, we’re surprisingly creating different ways to have a great time with each other.
Do you think now that languages and boarders are obstacles for people to understand each other?
Wikiblog – Day 3
Today was the third day of One World Project and it was amazing. We had three activities and they were so beneficial that it broadened our horizons about peace.
Firstly, we had “Hope, Fear and Dreams” session. The aim of the session was to understand each other’s hopes, fears and dreams, to know each other better, to face with the others’ realities, and the challenges, and to reach our project’s aims, goals, and objectives. The second was the brainstorming about the discussion. We proposed some words about the concept of peace. The last one was “Art Group”. Its aim was to reflect our ideas and feelings through art and to make our abstract outcomes visualize.
To sum up, we gained more information about peace. We talked to each other, faced with the realities, and produced our own understanding about peace. Therefore, we are getting closer to the objectives and aims of the project.
Arnie-Dana-Davide- Elif-Gülşah
Wikiblog – Day 4
Peace is ourselves
Hello we are Adela, Gianluca, Selen and Mediha, and we are going to continue with the daily “wikiblog”. Our day basically consisted on peace, but… what is peace for us? You may say help, love, strength, sharing, freedom, forgiveness… we could be writing adjectives for the whole afternoon. Let start.
After discussing for a long time, we found out that for us peace is balance, which means that every part of the “construction” is necessary in order to keep it up without falling, also being together as a group loving others as human beings not focusing on color, religion, culture. Furthermore, we could say that peace is also hope, in the sense of building something unique: “ONE WORLD”. Going deeper, we can also find peace through happiness. How? Happiness means self-stability not only with yourself but also in your work, with the people around you, with your family and almost in every field of your life. So if it was your turn, how would you define peace?
The second part of the session was focused on our qualities, on discovering ourselves and how we could, in and individual and personal way, execute this actions in order to find peace. As a result, we discovered that is not that impossible taking real actions to set peace, not in a global way but step by step we may end up building something great and that we were able to do everything we really want to do.
To sum it up, we have to say that this was a wonderful day to learn a little more about our own attitudes and to decide how or when to take actions for self-development towards peace. We have to leave because Palestinian night is about to start!!!
However, we all would like to know what is your opinion towards this topic: PEACE. You can leave us a comment in this link https://m.facebook.com/asshryo/
And remember, if you want to find love or peace in others, we have to work first in ourselves.
Ciao!!!
Wikiblog – Day 5
We can be heroes…
We woke up to a rainy day. Fortunately, it was not too cold to train. We started the process of making a special song for the project. It was really funny and inspiring trying to produce a song together. Eventually we succeeded to have many sentences in different languages. Tomorrow we will continue the song-creation and the final recording.
After lunch the rain was still pouring down. Perfect weather to see a movie! We saw a movie called Selma, which tells the story of Martin Luther King and how he led the non-violent march from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama in 1964.
The movie was very touching and had a strong impact on us. Especially since the topic of human rights is something we are discussing a lot this week. It was inspiring to us to see how they used non-violent methods to reach their goals. We believe that we can learn a lot from it. We learned that the union of people makes us strong and can have the power to change political laws. Of course, this intention must be structured and we saw that having a strong and inspiring leader can make a big difference. This needs to be a leader that works with the support his/her followers and is not superior. Another observation from movie is that media can play a big role in effecting people. Media (reporters etc) can communicate what is happening so that people can learn what is happening in reality. For this we see a big need in today’s society. Many horrible scenes are taking place all over the world, and it is important to communicate what is happening so that everyone can have an awareness of it.
One comment we heard about the movie, from some people within the group, is “why didn’t white people take action? How could they just sit by and watch how black people were being treated?”. One reflection we have about this, is that we have similar situations going on in the world today. It is very easy to be critical of things being done in the past, but what about our actions today? A reality with wars and fleeing people. How are we responding to this? Are we doing everything that is in our power to do, or are we just sitting by and watching what is happening? As we are writing this it reminded us about a line in the song we were creating earlier today; How can I be a hero today? How can I be today’s Martin Luther King?
If you wish to add a comment, please do it in the following link: https://m.facebook.com/asshryo/
