Youth exchange "WIFI- Why Internet Is Freaking Important" in France

In the middle of April from 10th-19th Seiklejate Vennaskond participated in Youth Exchange project called WIFI- Why Internet Is Freaking Important, in a lovely city called Amiens. During 9 days of activities participants from 4 different countries such as Estonia, Spain, Portugal and France came together to discuss about the good and the bad side of the Infamous INTERNET.

The first day started off with names games and team builders to get to know eachother better and that the group would be more comfortable together and then we had the presentation for the project. The main activity for the project was to make a video surrounding the topic of Internet and time for making the video was separated between the days of the project. The last day we presented the video to everyone and to some people who came from the hosting organisation called Concordia.

We had activities such as freedom of speech or hate speech, where there was written down around 10 sentences some who may have been a little controversial but was necessary to have because then we could see that participants had different point of views and in the groups they had to decide if the sentence was a freedom of speech or hate speech and it was very interesting to see that people did have differences of opinions regarding these topics. The activity wasn’t meant to become in any way personal but just for the people to decide if the sentence was a freedom of speech or hate speech. In the end everyone appreciated the activity a lot because the whole group discussed about them quite a lot and it made the whole group way closer because everyone could share their ideas, thoughts and feelings.

In the middle of the project for one day it was the NO technology day. We collected everyone’s phones and for the whole day no one could use their phones. Then we had an activity called Technology addiction where we discussed about the technology addictions and how we could fix the problems and how to use technology less ourselves too. The afternoon was free and we visited Amiens. Special thanks to Thomas who was our local guide and we had an amazing time without technology connecting us as a group even more deeper level.

One day people from Europe Direct came to our project and presented us what is Europe Direct Erasmus, Europe elections, European Union and what is the purpose of each of these things. Because 2 of them were doing EVS in Europe direct so then they talked about their experience on how it is to do voluntary work in a foreign country and explained how we could apply for voluntary services as well. They divided us into groups and made different kinds of games and competitions around EU that got us really involved and energetic around the topic.

4 evenings out of 9 each country had an opportunity to represent their country and make a cultural evening for everybody. The first night was Portuguese night and they did a fantastic job at this and set the expectations so high for everybody else. So the next nights everyone knew that they had to bring their A game as well and represent their country to the fullest too. Overall everyone did an amazing job at this and each night we had lots of fun with each cultural games, music and dances and of course we had our stomachs full of each countries speciality foods.

Photo is from Estonian cultural night. Our theme was a classic Estonian birthday party with a big table full of food and great people around it !

Special thanks to the whole Concordia team and Adrien who was the master for the activities - the creative guy behind the activities for the project. And of course everybody who participated in WIFI project, you’ll be missed!

This summary was made by Erki Vessin