13th February – 21th February
On Sunday 14th our team manager Matej made an announcement : « Ladies and Gentlemen, your captain and his team are pleased to welcome you on board of flight number *** destination Youth for Change. The temperature there … » That day started a trip rich in experience, knowledge, exchanges, learnings, awareness, friendship and fun ! Yes we are youth !
During five days, we received non formal training on different topics such as management, communication and press, leadership, human rights, youth activists and fundraising. Classes were given by the trainers or by external experts, with theoretical parts and more practical activities. An open space for expressing our ideas was given to us for each topics. We worked a lot in groups, always arranged differently in order to make ideas come up and promote exchange.
One of the aims of the week was to set up a street action in Chisinau on a topic of our choice. From the very first day we started to work on it : who, where, what, what for, which budget, press etc. Friday night, everything was ready for the action on Saturday. Of course some unexpected events occured… like great weather ! Forget the umbrellas ! So we came in the city center and started our flash mob peacefully. We decided to protest against human trafficking. To do so, some of us were in boxes with prices on them, some others were trying to sell them to Modovians and a third group was walking around with posters and flyers to give to people an explaination to open their awareness. Press was there and interviewed us during the action. And guess what, the same evening we were on tv information ! Aren’t we efficient?
Contributed by Milena Mathé