Contact Making Seminar - KA3 within Erasmus+

Between the 21st-25th of November, I had the opportunity to be part of a great project, a Contact Making Seminar in El Padul (Granada), Spain. The purpose of this project was to connect with other organisations in order to discuss and develop new strategies of cooperation for future Eramus+ projects, especially within KA3.

For me, this experience was one of the most inspiring part of my personal and professional development. I went there having a vague idea about what we were going to do and just thinking that I had to work hard and find out more details about the other organisations and to prepare the field for possible partnerships. But, beside all of this, I discovered more, new people, new ideas, amazing experience. And after all this, I am ready to go for more.

The first part was the meeting day when we had the chance to know each other better and we were informed what we were going to do for the next day. It was an entertaining first meeting because we came to know each other by playing some games that made us more comfortable within the team. And this is how we started to become more than just a working team, but a team that wants to know and share knowledge and friendship.

The first day started by introducing ourselves and we had the possibility to share information about us, expectations, fears and contributions that we could add to the project. It was a great exercise because we could understand each other's role, perspective and interests.

Getting to know each other

The next step, which was waited by all of us, meeting all the organisations, finally came. That was the point where we had to give the best of us to make a good presentation in order to find possible partners for future projects.

Part of the participating organisations

Having this field covered, we were ready to build the teams and start working on our own projects. But, before that we had to find out more about the whole Erasmus+ programme and about the projects that we can propose following its structure: the three Key Actions (1,2,3). Giving the fact that the project was about KA3 (which it is focused on institutions), we prepared a KA3 project, a draft for a structural dialogue between young people and decision-makers. We had an entire day dedicated to all Key Actions, but, as mentioned before, we focused on KA3, so, at the end of the day, we had a clear idea of how it works, on what to insist and how to put all our ideas into one. All the information can be found here.

Ideas for projects

Another interesting and productive part of the project implied working in teams, and I say it was productive because we worked a lot and not in a single team and the interesting fact was that no one suggested we should have done like that. So, we changed teams at every new task, first in small teams and for the final project in a larger group because, most of us, were interested in a particular topic and because the time was short, we thought we would've been more productive into a larger group.

Therefore, having the partnership established, all the information about the Erasmus+ timeline, we started our work together. First of all, we started by putting all the ideas we had and group them within big categories so we could work easier. It was, probably the hardest part, but in the end, we presented our proposal in front of the other teams and discussed based on each other's work and, finally, we received feedback on how we did, what we've missed and suggestions on how to improve our project.

Presenting our project

The whole experience gave me the possibility to learn new things and to improve my communication skills, the ability to work in different teams in short time and, also, a lot of information on how, the programme we love so much, works.

One way of saying good bye

Author: Andreea Moise, Mobility Center Assistant at GEYC