Celebrating Diversity

In the beginning of July (1st - 8th July), StepEurope hosted six countries, Finland included, for a culturally and globally significant topic: Refugee Crisis, the dangers of racism and intolerance towards minorities. We have just returned to the office and are remembering this very exciting and fulfilling week of internationality and diversity gasps from suspense because title was not clear enough, with our third international training here in Finland!

The main goal of the training was to educate a new generation of youth workers that would
have proper competencies to respond to the challenges Europe is facing nowadays,
especially in regard to the integration process of the refugee/migrants/
minority groups in their community and promotion of cultural diversity.

Our excellent trainers Max Fras and Tewodros Mekonnen involved an excellent program through which they provided a fulfilling collection of information and statistics illustrating the origins, the strategies and forms, as well as the dangers of migration and the process of integration both practically and emotionally. We also personally connected on these topics with stories of experiences from the participants with issues of migration and crisis that lead to migration and how it affects everyone who experienced this phenomena themselves.

On the other hand, fun times away from the seriousness of the topic were never forgotten; as our participants never failed to serve with cooperating with different varieties of evening activities -such as Finnish games, board games, Sauna evenings, and exploring the city for one of the days.

It was lovely to see how everyone became friends very quickly and we all bonded as a big diverse and international family; the essence of all Erasmus+ youth projects! To many more to come in the future!