Erasmus+ youth exchange “Adventures in Your Career Choices” started on the 6th of September, 2022 when 30 participants from Latvia, Italy, Spain and Romania arrived to the project venue – guest house “Upeslīči”, near the city Jelgava.
We started our program on the 7th of September. The first day was devoted to getting to know each other and team-building. Through different name games, team-building activities, icebreakers and energizers we met each other, formed a group and created a safe space with common agreements for upcoming days.
On the next day we already jumped into the topic of the project. The aim of the second day was to get to know the local realities on the labor market for young people. All activities were organized by our wonderful Spanish team. To explore this topic, participants created short theatre sketches, participated in an interactive quiz with questions asked and answered by each country group, and in the end of the day participants learned something new about opportunities that Erasmus+ programm offers, the Youthpass and 8 life-long learning competences.
The fourth day of the project was about exploring own career path and objectives. Sessions in this day were organized by our Romanian partners. Participants analysed different resumes using the world cafe method. Later on they had the chance to create their own resumes using the Europass template and they used it also in the job interview simulation that followed later on. Additionally, participants also got introduced to the 16 personalities test, to find out something more about themselves and what career paths the results of this tests offers.
The fifth day was about discovering various EU and local opportunities for young people. This day was organized by Italians. Participants worked in groups and shared, searched and finally presented the info about their topic. Later on participants visited city of Jelgava, where participants also received different tasks they had to do in groups.
The sixth day was about discovering start-ups / social entrepreneauship and developing their
own Ideas. This day was organized by Latvians. To explore this topic, participants discussed what social entrepreneurship is, they had a creative thinking workshop and at the end they had to come up with their own social entrepreneurship ideas. Finally, they also learned about elevator pitches.
Then, on the 12th of September, everyone went by bus to Riga where they visited Creative Industries Incubator and also the social enterprise “All Opportunities” (“Visas Iespējas”) and the whole day ended with having a latvian dinner together in “Lido”.
The 8th day was about evaluation, and creating our own future plans. And so on the 14th of September our project was finished and everyone went back home with wonderful memories, new friends, gained new knowledge and skills, and also inspiration to start new adventures in their career paths.
During this project various non-formal methods were used, and each day ended with the reflection time that was organised in national groups, mostly using the five finger method. During the project we also had a lot of debriefing where we discussed the process of activities, our experience, feelings and findings. During the evenings participants also had the chance to present their countries and cultures, and we had a wonderful time learning about Romanian dances, Spanish tongue twisters, Italian gestures and Latvian celebrations, as well as so much more…
Partners of the project:
Hosting organization: Baltic Regional fund
Romania: Associate Young Initiative
Spain: Consejo de la Juventud de Ciudad Real,
Italy: PAOLAB
The youth exchange project is financially supported by the European Commission through the “Erasmus+: Youth in action” program, which is administered by the Agency for International Youth Programs in Latvia.
