Augustina Žymančiūtė wants to inspire you and shared her experience about Youth exchange ,You-th&Heal-th” in Georgia. She says: “I went to the project ,,You-th&Heal-th” in Georgia because of the topic as I was always interested in healthy/ecological lifestyle and the second reason was that I had never visited Georgia before. I was pleasantly surprised that the project venue is just few meters from the Black sea! The only thing I have heard about Georgia before the project was that Georgian people are very hospitable. And event though I knew that I was always very surprised how really friendly and helpful they are – starting from George and Gvansa and ending with random strangers from the street. In my country we have a different culture so this made me to stay surprised any time I faced strong hospitality from Georgian people.
In general the whole program that was provided by Gvansa was very interesting, involving and all the time there was a feeling that organizers are true professionals in this area. For me personally the methods used for getting know each other, team building, reflections were the best. I also liked a lot both day and night hikes. Also I enjoyed time in Batumi and Zugdidi, it was nice to interview locals and to make a flashmob in the crowd. Gvansa used to give us tasks which involves local people. At first all of them seemed to be scary and it was probably because of my Lithuanian background as we are not used to enter a private space of unknow people. But in the end all of it converted into a wonderful experiences and memories.
Another very important part was participants. From the first view countries like Ukraine, Moldova, Poland, Armenia aren’t the most attractive countries as we are always looking for the West. But what I find out during the project that they were the perfect participating countries as we have similar history, similar lifestyle. It was very interesting to have discussions with other participants about life in their countries, about the issues they have and etc. Even though we had two intercultural evenings where we were sharing our traditional meals, songs, dances and etc., for me personally the real intercultural time was just having random conversations with participants every day.
It was a long 11 days project and it was enough time to make deep connections end even cry while saying Goodbye. And now when we are all back home it’s nice to create plans for meeting new friends once again. This feeling is amazing!
This project in general was one of the best things that happened in my life. It’s hard to put my feelings into words and show how much I brought out of it. I remember my hesitations whether I should participate or not and now I’m so happy that I said YES to it!”