Language animation

  Two participants, one from Poland and one from Ukraine, prepared language animation.

   Firstly, Nadia showed us Ukrainian alphabet and asked Polish group to write their names in Cyrillic. The Ukrainian group had to do the same thing but with Polish alphabet. 

   Then the groups had to translate some sentences: Ukrainians had to write them in Polish and Polish in Ukrainian. It was a hard task because each group could ask another one how to translate it but we couldn't communicate in English. So we had to listen to each other very carefully.

   The last activity was connected with "false friends" in Polish and Ukrainian. Nadia showed the Ukrainian words and the Polish participants had to guess its Polish translation. But when they saw "склеп" (sklep) they started thinking about the shop. And the right answer was of course "crypt". Vice versa, the Ukrainians couldn't guess what "płot" meant. It was a surprise to find out that this was a "fence". 

   The activity ended with hard words in both languages. While writing a Ukrainian one, the organizers themselves made a mistake in the word . And a Polish one could be pronounced only after several tries. Maybe this photo will help you to use the "female resident of Constantinople" correctly.

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3rd Oxford Debate - "In the future robots will have the same rights as humans"

   Andrzej Smyk told us that we could choose the topic for the debates by ourselves. The group voted and chose "People's life in the future". We decide to have a thesis "In the future robots will have the same rights as humans".

   Before these debates the proposition and the opposition teams were given a short training including the test thesis which was a bit similar to our main one (and very different at the same time): "Every politician in Europe is a robot". The audience prepared controversial arguments and tricky questions for the speakers.

   The debates went quite well and the proposition team won. Both proposition and opposition teams gave persuasive arguments which might have changed the opinions of even those who could oppose an idea of robots having human rights before. The theme was very vast but during the Oxford debates your own opinion can't influence your speech, as you don't even choose your team and your role. Thus it's quite a challenge when you can't speak from your heart.

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Trip to "Bukowa Góra".

After lunch we went for a walk to bukowa Góra. This place is a part of roztocze national park. First we were walking through the village and after around 20 minutes we entered the forest. We had to climb a hill so it was a bit tiring for us. On the top we saw picturesque place. There were hills and houses far away. 



We took photos and went further. Going back was easier because we were going down. We were walking through the forest and there were beautiful tall trees around us. Then we came to the ponds "echo" where we could see horses, ducks and swans. Some of us went to walk on the beach and the rest stayed to admire the view from observation piont. 



On the way back to the venue everyone was talking and laughing in spite of being tired

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2nd Oxford Debate - In the near future world be a monoculture.

When we were voting for the thesis “in the near future world will be monoculture” we were ruled by Intension to talk about the future of humanity. We were interesting in the destiny of the world culture. The thesis was about “monoculture” - comprehensive homogenic culture all over the planet.



First speakers were defining the thesis differently: the proposition, was saying, that “near future" is from 50 to 100 years, and opposition - not more than 10 years. The arguments was about traditions, money, history, integration, language, religion, self-identification and if monoculture can exist at all.
We have concluded that monoculture would destroy national identities and more over it is impossible in the nearest future. So opposition has won and we chose two best speakers: one from the opposition and one from the proposition. And this people will represent debates at polish school in order to improve educational system in Poland.



We had very viewed emotions and feelings after this debates. It was very educative for us and important for humanity.

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Sleepywill town simulation

On Sunday we experienced very interesting exercise — “Sleepywill town simulation”. The goal of this event was to improve our public speaking skills, which will help us during the debates.



The task was to solve the financial problem between two groups of local society : youth and muslims. Young people needed somewhere to have fun in their small town, so they wanted to build the skate park and the cinema. On the other hand Muslims didn’t have a place where to pray, so they wanted to have a mosque. But the government could finance only one project this year.



We were divided into several groups: youth, Muslims, LGBT, government, association of people with disabilities and bank. Every group should give the arguments to the government what should be financed this year.



During long time of arguing we ensured the government to give money, because there could be a lot of youngsters among Muslims and they also need to have modern conveniences in there small native town.



Frankly speaking this task was very useful for all of us, because we were working together in groups, sharing the ideas and improving our language skills.

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World cafe - active citizenship

During our third day of the project we had workshops about active citizenship. We split into four groups and sit down at four tables with different topics to discuss.

At one of the table the topic was “What is NGO and do we need them?”

During the discussion we established the definition of Non Governmental Organisation and got the same opinion if we need them. The answer was “Yes”.

At the second table we need to give examples of active citizenship in the places where we live. There were many ideas as we come from many different cities. Some examples of the more spectacular ones are a Bike Picnic organised by NGO in Lubartów where even 30 thousand people take part in.

The other group focused on the meaning of the being active for each member of the team. Such a discussion revealed true definition and position of the participants on the subject of active citizenship and the comments helped to see the spheres where every person is involved in city life. In turned out that we have a lot hobbies to share: organizing of educational programs for the young people, taking active part in cultural events,volunteering, fundraising for good purposes, organizing cleaning-up campaigns and voting on every election.

One of the group had a creative task to draw a graffiti about active citizenship and afterwards a beautiful painting remained on our wall with the city that has a lot to offer for everyone: bike rent, free Wi-fi, green parks and free clean water in the city-center.

The last group tried to understand what they can change in their nearest environment t through being active and we found out that almost every aspect of life can be changed by ourselves starting from  culture, ecology, tourism infrastructure,  integration of the minorities and everyday life of every citizen You just need to be prepared for lots of hard work which is ahead.

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1st Oxford Debate - "Every person enters an NGO because of personal profit".

"It's evening of 1 September..I'm taking on official clothes, check my plan of a speech and go out of the room.  It's my first debate ever and I feel a little bit nervous...

Our thesis was "Every person enters an NGO because of personal profit". My team was opposite, so that's made a play  harder.  The proposite team was a really strong and they had good arguments. The question from the audience was great. But.. we've lose this debate.

 But after all debate was a great one!

I really like it, because of interesting discussion, new knowledge and experience.

Hope my next debate will be even better."

Liza - speaker



On our Oxford debate, the majority of the international group was the audience. From my perspective it wasn't just passive participating. We had to follow what the speakers said, because in the round second and third we had to add own arguments and ask the questions. It was a great exercise for practising my memory and attention. I'm sure that this skill will be helpful in the future.

Agnieszka - audience




On the official and the preparatory debates I was a secretary. I had to measure time, give signals to the speakers went their time was coming to an end or ended. While debating I really was stressed because I was in centrer audience was looking at me. I'm shy person and I'm not used to public speaking. Despite this I became more confident.

Dominika - secretary 

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