IP Rennes

IP Paimpont, Bretagne

Feb. 2008

At first sight, Europe is very big and far away from you.  But nothing of this is true, Europe is everywhere, in your street, on the internet, ... Once you lived together with other youngsters from all over Europe/the world you feel like you are part of a small village.

We, a group of students social work, had the chance to have an experience like that. 14 days we spend in the beautiful forest of "le Broceliande", in Bretagne, France. We were surounded by the magic of King Arthur, Merlin and Lancelot and had some wonderfull spring days together with our friends from Poland, Portugal, France and Turkey. This experience had a big impact on the whole group.

"Living together for two weeks as five different nationalities, five different cultures is a real exciting experience. Before you actually meet, you’re thinking about how it would be like. Maybe you’ve heard some prejudices or stereotypes and you want to see if they are actually true. And then you meet… and you start exchanging. Afterwards you feel that your view on the world has changed, has become more broad. You actually feel different."

"Sometimes we had big discussions but these discussions had a very high level of learning. Even a conflict can be very useful in your process of learning . A conflict caused by contradictory opinions can bring people together."

Open your mind...

Learning about other cultures is also a confrontation with your own cultural identity. That cultural identity is not the same as your nationality. You still have cultural differences between regions, generations, living in the city or at the countryside, and so on. Because culture is everything: from child raising beliefs over clothing and concept of beauty to how you celebrate and mourn. The image of an iceberg is used to visualise that most of the culture that defines you is underneath the surface. Sometimes you’re not even aware of how much you’re defined by your culture.

It takes a lot of energy to keep on communicating and trying to understand each other in a language you’re not used to speak. But it is so worthwhile. This makes the difference between a multicultural and a intercultural society. In a multicultural society the different cultures live next to each other without doing the effort to meet. In an intercultural society people with different cultures do want to make that connection. But therefore everybody has to do the effort and have the possibilities to reach out and really get to know each other!

The Training...

A group of students from five different countries came together to learn and experience more about intercultural learning, European youth -and social work and non-formal learning. All participants were related to youth or social work. But all have a different educational background. Some were more into sociology, others more in social-cultural animation... All those different perspectives and different cultural backgrounds were ingredients for a very diverse group with a lot of ideas and points of view.

"As a participant you can feel the different perspectives as they confront your point of view. So you are forced to reflect and maybe change the way how you deal with youth/social work and you start to understand and respect the way of thinking of others."

An important part of the training was were we spend attention to our history, evolution and backgrounds of social work...

"In a way it very interesting to do the exercise for my country. Looking back in history can tell us very much how things are organized today. It was very remarkable to how events of the past have their influence on the way youth social work is organized. Every country pointed out the most important moments who influenced youth social work. You can’t even imagine witch events were mentioned. Like for example: the influence of an earthquake was the most remarkable for me."

Boring and formal?

The word 'training', studies and 'education' can sound very boring and formal for some of you. But during this training we saw a complete different approach. Teachers from formal university and university-colleges had to work together with non-formal trainers with backgrounds in animation, clowning, European Youthwirk... This mix of two different backgrounds created a wonderfull dynamic in this training. As well for teachers, trainers and students there were a lot of learning opportunities. The animative and playfull non-formal techniques and nice ways of working made this training a wonderfull learning experience for all of us.

Formal, non-formal, informal?

"There are differences between formal and non formal education.

Formal learning is most likely to happen in an organised and structured situation, like in schools and institutes, courses and training periods. For this you get ‘evidence’ such as diplomas and certificates.

Informal learning is something you learn daily, while doing activities at work, at home, interacting with people, friends or family in your free time. It is a spontanious way of learning.

Non formal learning is not the same as ‘informal’ it is not in your free time, it is seen as ‘education’ only the ‘evidence’ is not there and as said, it is not obligatory and structured.

This is some important issue if you think about it, social/cultural work is mostly situated in the ‘non-formal’ and ‘informal’ area of education.

You can fullfil an important role in the someone elses learning process."

Coffebreaks, drinking beer and walks in the forest? You call that learning?!

After and before the daily training we had the opportunity to fill in our free time the way we want. You can imagine young people having a drink and getting to know each other and their country in an informal way. During this evenings we learned a lot from eachother, could talk out some differences we encountered during the day... It’s unbelievable how interesting these conversations were! We talked about religion, politics, human rights, personal tastes etc. but we didn’t forgot to party!

"You can’t imagine the things you learn living together with 4 other nationalities. 49 other people who all have their own individual cultural identity. No book or sociological theory can teach you the things I learned, being part of an intercultural experience."