Key to improvement - another trail

as the experience of animating the streets in porto and on the way was tough, the trainers decided to give the participants another chance. the following morning we started with the reflection of what happened in porto. and that point we consider one of the key points of the training course. the participants brought themselves out everything that went wrong and what could have been done differently. the trainers even didn’t have to interfere with their remarks, just to guide the discussions and make conclusions. everything that happened on that morning was extremely powerful and helped a lot in group growing.

after lunch time we gave them another trial to make animation on the streets, this time in amarante. they divided each other into groups. though the experience was a lot better this time, it was still not good enough. but we were in the learning process and it’s always useful to have those not that good experiences on the training course not during the local activities or on the train. the amarante animation was better in that sense that they had a clear idea of what was happening. the only problem was that at one point it wasn’t street animation anymore but just loads of noise. the idea of the afternoon performance was to promote the happening in casa de juventud in the evening. the best performance of the training course took place during their march to the old town. they transformed miguel (portuguese participant) into “the box head”, it meant they made a box with smiling faces and ads and but it into his head. he couldn’t see anything, was guided by other participants. unfortunately as it turned out afterwards he couldn’t hear basically anything and that’s why he ended up crashing into cars and bushes.
in the evening we had adina’s birthday. we asked the house to bake a cake for her and made a lovely birthday surprise by singing happy birthday in all languages. she was happy as one birthday kid can be. as it got late and dark started the happening in the center. the participants did different activities with local youngsters. that was probably a very strong moment for the participants as the locals took actively part in their activities.
as a conclusion it must be noticed that giving a second chance is good and useful. life long learning – people are constantly in the learning process…..and from my point of view it’s good that the participants acknowledged what they did wrong and how to improve!