Day 5

This morning was free time so after aa well deserved lie - in we all walked to the Kuressaare Castle. They had a good museum and a skeleton of knight who had been buried in one of the walls hundreds of years ago.

After, we saw the beach and we liked all the puddles through the park on the way there. The Baltic Sea was freezing (we didn't swim)! Tea's and coffees were drunk in the local cafe before the lovely restaurant for lunch.

Back in the training room, "Can I come In" was a great way of thinking about how Human Rights can be violated and the situations that bordering countries deal with refugees. Everyone got very involved in their role. That evening, the local Youth Centre hosted our "Human Library" where each of us was "checked out" by the local youngsters and questioned on our book topics.

After a brilliant day, we finished with 'Joint Activities' in the pool :) We played games suggested by us, the participants, as well as @down the drain' in the whirlpool.

Have fun, Cat Jovana Rozana

Day 3

Our day started with a topic "What matters?", where we were divided into pairs, then into groups of four and finally in a group of eight people. We had a task to try to figure it out which five human rights  matters the most in our opinion.

We continued with "Take a step forward" where we transform into different roles (for example: disabled young guy who can only moves in a wheelchair, succesful import/export company owner, unemployed single mother ...) and we had to move one step forward when we agreed with the statement according to our situation.

Trainers really surprised us with the next task - we had to sit at different tabels and trainers gave us something to drink and to eat, while we were debating about UN 2020 programme and human rights in participating countries.

Before dinner we also took some time and had fun in the spa ...

 UK, Romania, Lithuania and Slovenia represented themselves at intercultural evening. We've found out that we don't know anything about Romania, realized that UK marmelade does not have a good taste, Lithuania has a fake Jägermaister with 27 herbs and that Slovenia really has the best pumpkin oil. Party continued with different games, karaokes and with some Gangam style dancing. All in all - we had a really great day.

Tina, Gabriel, Kadri

Day number 2!

In the morning after breakfast we did our final group building exercises. We had some tasks that challenged us as a group: it was a "Mission Impossible" but we managed to complete it. We came up with a fun dance and a slogan for our project, we made a human sculpture with 8 bodies and 5 legs, one of us learned how to count till 20 in Estonian and many more tasks.

Strenghtened by the Coffee Break, we had a quiz about Youth in Action program where we think everyone got to learn something new or refresh their memory about the different aspects of the program.

We had an amazing lunch buffet in the city center and a little bit of relaxing in the spa, and then got back together. First we had an energizer where the challenge was to make other people laugh and we found out that Andrius and Rima are very good at resisting laughter.

The afternoon workshop was the alphabet game. We had to come up with human rights related words starting with each letter of the alphabeth.  We then in groups tried to define them with our own words and tried to explain the link to human rights. Have you ever thought that in a way Zorro  was  an early HR activist? 

In the evening we had a molecule game as an energizer and after a lot of hugging we resumed to the final workshop of the day. We solved a puzzle about 6 famous HR activists and discussed their importance  and the effect their effort had in history. We even got to know stories that we had never heard before. And some of us were more familiar with the topic and shared extra facts and information. 

For the evening Slovakia, Italy and Estonia indroduced their cultures and countries. 

We got to try their typical food, drinks, and we watched some videos about their countries. We learned national dances and had a great time all evening, eating Slovakian cheese...

 

... and learning how Italians speak with their hands.

Mai-Liis

Michele

Martin

The Day number 1!

The first working day started with Introduction and name games.

The other step was to create the RULES for all the seminar.

We wrote 5 rules each participant and then we form several teams of 5 to find out which rules are the best - from 25 we decide only 5. 

As the teams where finised we stick the rules on the big paper and form the BIG 5:

1. DONT BE LATE
2. RESPECT EACH OTHER
3. SPEAK ONLY ENGLISH (or GHETTO, or 3 meters rule)
4. GET INVOLVED
5. AND FOLLOW THE RULES

Heleri indroduced the group the weekly schedule and Andrius got us a task to write the HR blog in teams, so THE first team: Balys(LT), Bebe (SK) and Liis (EST)

The schedule of the WEEK.

We talked about differences between formal and non-formal learning.

 HUMAN RIGHTS GAME in Kuressaare town. We were divided into 4 groups and the task was to ask the locals different questions about the life on the island, on Human Rights topic, violation etc. Every group prepared a topic which they thought is currently relevant in Estonia (underage voting, racism, LGBT topic etc.). We can divide the local people opinions into two: open-minded and intolerant, but in general everyone is happy to live in the most beautiful island in ESTONIA, where the life is peaceful and there are no discrimination problems :)

 Street action

 We visited Kuressaare youth center

Afterwards we talked about our experience in the streets of Kuressaare and presented our results to all seminar participants.

Photo: Andrius Plindinas

In the end of the evening we had a chance to introduce our sending organisations. It was a good posibility to change contacts and get to know each other better.

The day 0 - Hello and welcome!

Hi!
I'm Andrius - one of project organizers. :)
All our team is already waiting for the participants of this training in this awesome place - Saaremaa island. For upcoming nine days we all gonna live in "Johan Spa Hotel" - a place, where after hard
workshops, body and soul can rest. :)

Also, i want introduce our seminar main topic:
Seminar (action 4.3) will bring together 21 participants (active youth, youth leaders, young teachers) from 7 countries (Estonia, Lithuania, United Kingdom, Italy, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia) to Kuressaare, Saaremaa for 9 days to share experience in the field of human rights, debate on different related issues and to find solutions to abuse of rights and develop new projects and initiatives to raise awareness about human rights in our societies.
Seminar has following objectives:
-raise awareness of human rights among youth
-explore issues connected to human rights in participating countries
-promote creation of equal opportunities to everyone
-to be aware of different types of discrimination resulting human rights abuse
-to debate on conflict of human rights / abuse of rights
-to explore options to find help in case of human rights violation
-to be aware of different level of protection of human rights
-understand the role of civil society organizations in protection of human rights
-develop new projects and initiatives connected to human rights issues
Among 9 days spent in Kuressaare, participants will work on the aims of the seminar, facilitated by two facilitators and get involved in topics through non-formal methods. They will carry out activities in local schools and prepare their follow-up ideas to work with human rights with young people in their communities.

Hope, everybody is ok and waiting for trainings to start!

See you soon ;)
Andrius