Where do I even start and how do I even express every emotion that I am relieving right now through words? I think every human being, at least once in their lifetime, experiences something absolutely life-changing, which helps discover themselves from a completely new angle, gives a sense of purpose and motivates overwhelmingly much.
For me that experience was my first ever Erasmus+ project, which happened to be a training course in a Radava, Slovakia titled “Effective Communication tools for You(th)”.
The topic of the project was close to my heart, since I am a cross-cultural communication specialist, my excitement for the training was doubled, and on the bottom line, I was going to hone my skills of communication, travel, meet new people and explore a new culture. But what did I know that this training course was going to give me more than those. Being a new graduate with a bachelor’s degree, hoping for a bright future, yet being full of blurry visions and anxiety towards what I should do next, I was desperately looking for something that could be somewhat of guidance in such confusing time. Lucky for me, this very training course served as that guidance towards the unknown. Peter Huray, the project coordinator of this wonderful training course, alongside with his amazing team of trainers, went above and beyond his way to create the most comfortable, safe, productive environment for us to learn through none-formal ways of education.
The objectives of the project were to adapt new techniques of non-verbal communication, manipulation in communication, communication in stress situation, visual thinking, body language, marketing communication, etc. All of the mentioned was presented to us in a very professional way and all according to Erasmus+ philosophy of none-formal education methods, each session following up with interesting and creative tasks, team building games and daily evaluations.
Aside from professional growth, I had the most amazing time there, surrounded by incredible people from 14 different countries. We shared great moments together, learnt so much from each other, and made memories for a lifetime! I found out something new and exciting from each of the participants, be it about their cultures, professional fields or even life stories and their backgrounds. To say that the farewell was hard would be an understatement!
I absolutely fell in love with Slovakia, especially the capital Bratislava. We got to explore their culture from up-close and it was so refreshing to experience something so different from our own.
I will forever be grateful to Tigranuhi, Irina, and the entire FIOH team for blessing me with this opportunity, and I hope they know that this impacted me for a lifetime!
