Youth Exchange Blog: "I have a dream" in Istanbul, TÜRKIYE by Brita

Hi, I’m Brita and this year I graduated university with my bachelor’s degree. Because of a few miscellaneous adventures here and there and this degree taking away most of my summers as well, I haven’t been to an Erasmus YE since 2019! I had been to 4 other ones before, however as they were so long ago, I wasn’t quite sure on what to expect. Half of me was almost dreading it, okay maybe a quarter of me, and the other half was sure it’ll be fun and engaging like they always are. I kept thinking this is exactly what you need again, to get out of your comfort zone and learn and discuss and meet new people and new points of view. The project took place in Silivri, which is technically in Istanbul, but to reach Istanbul city centre, it took about 2 hours by car at least without any traffic. But I can’t complain, cause we were in a small village-like neighbourhood, the beach was 15 minutes (and a small steep hill) away and we had plenty of time to eat, go to the beach or have a nap whenever the activities weren’t happening. As an Estonian, clear blue warm water and lovely company was definitely one of the highlights.

At the start of the project, we played many teamwork and ice-breaker games, which made learning names pretty easy since there were about 31 people attending. During the project we had many teamwork presentations, where we had some limited time to make posters. We pitched our ideas, what a disability awareness campaign should look like, what kind of an event or project would we ourselves make to spread more awareness. Before the project we were sent the timetable also, we had plenty of coffee and snack breaks, but what excited me the most was a sitting volleyball mini-league! In the past I played volleyball for 3 years and to this day I play every now and then. We also played at a sitting volleyball tournament once with my team against professional players and it was a lot of fun, so i thought it was a brilliant way to highlight in the project how they manage. I also learned that in some countries, when the company has over a certain number of employees, they are required to have at least 5% of disabled people in their staff. But since we also talked about mental disabilities and so to say, invisible disabilities, it also got me thinking, how would it be regulated, because everyone would need an official diagnosis in that case. As a bit of an off-topic area, we learned about what it takes to organise an Erasmus Youth Exchange and about PCM (project circle management), which maybe, I could one day use myself to organise a YE.

I would recommend Erasmus to everyone who’s feeling like they’re sitting on their phone too much or has a little bit too much time on their hands. Or even if you feel like you don’t have enough time, just squeeze a YE in there somewhere, take some time off, engage your brain in some other type of activity, see more and do more, learn more about how things work in different countries, become more open-minded, meet great new people. And at the end of the project you can say „See you later!“ because if there’s a will, there’s a way and I’m going to visit the people I just met in their hometowns a few weeks later (and this is not the first time, and I still keep in touch with many of the previous participants!). All in all, it’s almost always a fun time.