Career BOOSTER+

Romania? What´s that you ask? Oh, the country of bears and cheap alcohol? None of that I’ve encountered. At least if I speak for myself. What caught my eyes was the wonderful and mesmerizing nature of this country. Did you know that Romania has its own valentines day? I bet you didn’t! And I guess you wouldn’t unless you had the chance of being a local, like me. Even if just for a couple of days. So back to the initial question. Romanians celebrate Valentine's day on the 24th of February. I know, sounds weird but trust me, Romanians are as sweet as sugar. You can feel it in the air when walking around the traditional open market you can find on the main squares.

All right, I know this sounds like the introduction to a travel blog post, but keep in mind that this wasn’t just an ordinary trip for me. I went there for a different purpose and that was to attend a Career booster plus training course. The main idea of the project was to bring together youth workers and discuss serious issues about youngsters in NEET situations, which means a young person not in education, employment or any kind of training. The program was quite intense. We were exchanging experience, methods of non-formal education, peer education and also possibilities of how to deal with the situation itself. The project took 10 days, what might seem like a hell of a long time for a TC, but it was actually really convenient due to breaking down barriers and bringing us, participants, closer together.

We started every morning at 10 am and deal with the topic via energizers, interactive activities, discussions and sharing ideas and emotions. The most interesting thing I’ve experienced in my opinion was probably teaching and learning each other new things using peer education methods. We went for an amazing trip to a nearby town called Sibiu and got to know the culture of Romania even better. On the 6th day of the project, we’ve been invited to the city town hall where we had a meeting with the speaker of the town hall and could ask him questions about how things work in Râmnicu Valcea. As always, we had an intercultural evening with plenty of different types of national alco.. eeh amazing food and presentations. Except for all the valuable knowledge I’ve gained during the time in Romania, I ’ve had a lot of fun, had made many new connections and I would definitely go again without a blink of an eye.