Hi my name is Emilia. I’m 23 and I’m from Armenia and I am here to tell you about a life changing experience on behalf of me and my peers.
From the 2nd to the 13th of November I was one the luckiest participants of an amazing project, called “Once uPon a time in TuniSia 🇹🇳”, organized by “Future in Your Hands” NGO. From the name you can guess where it was taking place. Good guess! You are right! In Tunisia, in the sunny coastal city of Hammamet.
It was a youth exchange programme. Forty participants from 4 countries: Armenia, Finland, Netherlands and Tunisia, came together in one place, to share their culture through national music and dance. A small group of young dancers, musicians, video and content creators were chosen to present Armenian heritage and to share our customs with other participants and locals.
Throughout those 10 days we managed to visit 3 tunisian cities: Tunis, Sidi Bou Saïd, Hammamet, and to have a 2,5 hour long impressive Pirate Ship Cruise, which enriched our knowledge about tunisian culture and their traditions.
To get quickly acquainted we had various ice-breaker activities, for example we checked our trust level by letting other participants guide us in creating art pieces while being blindfolded. We tried to “cook” a spaghetti tower and for some participants the dinner was very tasty.
Afterwards, we had the treasure hunt game in the Hammamet city center. The activity was to trade a sketchbook with our project logo with any other product that would cost or mean more for us. It was pretty hard, Tunisians are difficult to convince, but it was successful for all groups.
The plan for one of the days was to discuss the social problems of each country.
Photo and video group made a small video, where they combined the social problems.

Link is here ⬇️
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CWF6KhGgaCm/?utm_medium=copy_link
Also the whole group was divided into small groups, and we made some musicals, again connected with social problems.

But the best part was the custom sharing night, where the Armenian team presented The Armenian Wedding with all its beautiful traditions. Everyone enjoyed our presentation.

So at the end of the project we had a flesh mob in the city. All the participants were divided into 3 groups: dancers, musicians and photographers/videographers. We mixed national dances and songs of 4 countries. It was the most interesting part.
Link is here 🔽
https://fb.watch/9LxvqJrQFE/

We created a brochure that represents our dedicated work and lovely moments, you can find the link down below:
https://www.dropbox.com/home?preview=Armenia+(2).pdf 

It was really nice to meet such kind of people. After this project we became a big family. I really hope that one day we will meet again with the same people, maybe in another place.

The valuable experience and skills that we obtained during the project gave us the opportunity to grow and expand our mindset and will be used to develop our upcoming generation.