At the beginning of this spring, somewhere in New Castle, a small beautiful city close to the Nordic Sea, took place the training course "EuroIMPACT Plus". The aim of the training course was to improve the project management skills of the youths. The project took place between 5th- 12th of March.
"I encountered new cultures with which I wasn’t so accustomed with beforehand, so I appreciate the diversity and the effort of the organizers of gathering as many different cultures as they could. The theme was very helpful, I enriched my knowledge regarding project management and Erasmus+ projects. The location, Whitley Bay, was lovely, even though it was not Newcastle upon Tyne, as mentioned in the project description. The trainers were exepctionally nice and helping, and I really liked their approach to disseminating information. The other participants were very nice and friendly and we had a really good and useful time."
"I believe that getting exposed to and exploring new learning environments greatly enriches my educational experience. The Euro Impact Plus Training was therefore a great context in which to receive and share knowledge, ideas, tools and thoughts. Also, through the content delivered by the trainers, and implicitly the experiences of the participants, I learnt a lot of tips and trick regarding the management of an Erasmus Plus Project, how to write a successful application form, and a useful and easy applicable kit of tools and methodologies. Also, the training methods, the exercises, games and play-role used during the program kept us, the participants, active and fully involved in the activities. I also enjoyed the fact that most of the time we were working in mixed teams, always switching the members between the groups. This way, we had the chance to interact and share opinions with all the participants, getting to know each other better and, this way, enlarging our perspectives on solving different situations presented during the exercises. I am glad I took part of this enriching learning experience."
"I had a great experience during those 6 days of training held in UK in March. I met new people, I learnt new things, I saw new places and last but not least, I discovered myself. I’m not really sure how to start this, but I’m going to do it by mentioning that I’m facing a version of a better me and this project had a contribution in this process. I will continue by saying that I really liked the people (especially the Romanian team, which was really great, the best of the best). I met persons with different backgrounds, great stories and hopefully I had a contribution in their development, as they had in mine. We had great, enriching talks during the activities or during our free time. The trainers were nice too, people with experience, passionate about their work, really excited and positive. The activities were structured quite good, I liked the games we played, they helped us feel more at ease. I usually feel more comfortable when controlling the activities and the things about to happen, but those games made me feel more relaxed. The part which was not that good in respect to the activities, was that sometimes I felt like we were not learning but wasting time on useless details. This is something that can change with a better organization and planning for the future projects. "
"This project really boosted my confidence and helped me better my interaction skills, especially when it comes to international dialogue. Now I am more confident in approaching the initiation of a project."
"The training was a great opportunity to practice my language skills, especially for the fact that it took place in a country where English is the official language. Also, the strong emphasis on the group assignments helped me develop my communication and presentation skills, in the same time making me feel more confident regarding my competencies. Last but not least, I enjoyed meeting and exchanging ideas with people from other parts of the world, the diversity of our perspectives and the creative way of the approaches."
"This project had an impact on myself and that’s for sure. First of all, I am really proud of myself, since this training was more a personal development for me than a professional one. I noticed that I’m very adaptive – it’s like I lived all my life there, being really easy for me to accommodate, socialize and get used to the place. I’ve learnt that I am a real problem solver, I am more creative than expected, I can contribute with a lot of knowledge regarding the topic, but still, all the things that happened there were a great input for me. Professionally, I’m not really sure if I’m going to use very much of the information received from this experience. When it comes to the project management topic, I can say that I know more than presented about it, so this was mainly a refresher for me on the basic knowledge in this domain. What was really new for me was to learn about Erasmus+ projects, how to create one and how to evaluate it. It was nice to see the project management from a different perspective, still a less complicated one. All in all, I left UK with a nice taste of wanting to know more and thinking about writing an Erasmus+ project in the future."