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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Culinary evening

1 september, when we had culinary evening, i have also celebrating my birthday. We make some kind of party. It was awesome. All guys were so friendly, my Polish friends give me a present: very very tasty sweets, which we are together ate. I am very happy that I've an opportunity to celebrete my birthday in this company and it very nice that my bithday was in the same days with yourth exchange. At this evening we've become like a really good friends, it was so nice to seat near the fire, eat tasty food and drinks. This people made for me the best birthday party of my whole life. I am very thakfull for all organizators, coordinators and paticipants.

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Conducting workshops.

Creating and conducting team building workshops is a hard work that needs a lot of skills. In order to make it better, it is good to reflect. So here we would like to give a piece of advice on how we can improve our skills in conducting workshops. 

 - It is obligatory for the audience to be quiet when the conductor is giving instructions, 

- The speaking person must speak loud and ask the group if the instruction is clear. If it is not, explain one more time, 

- It is good to show how the workshop is working before actually starting to practice, - In international groups people from one country can help each other to understand the instructions clearly, 

- In the group of new people it is advisable to repeat each other's names before starting the activities, 

- We need to 'wake up' the group before staring the activities, thus we use sport games called 'energizers', 

- The conductor must not scream during giving the instruction when the group is too loud. It is better to stay quiet and wait till the group calms down,

 - Before starting giving the instructions, you need to check the area if it is good and well-prepared for your exercise, 

- Be sure that people in your group have comfortable conditions to perform the activity, 

- Before helping the conductor, make sure that your advise will be relevant and will not disturb him or her. However, the main advice for you is having fun and socializing.

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Crazy walk in the forest at night

It was a usual Friday and we done everything what we had to do. Andrzej came to us and said ‘we must go to the forest'. We was surprised, but we thought it was nice idea. We went to our rooms for warm clothes. Then Andrzej split us to the 4 people groups and in this groups we went to the forest. When we went to the forest it was darkness and the some of us were afraid. We walked and Andrzej told us what we have to do when we will see a bear. After this short story we continued our walk and we went to the beach. When we came we saw that Andrzej pretended to be dead. It was really crazy. After this we had to stay in the line and Andrzej made a video with us. Then we returned to the center where we are sleeping in this project. It was really cool and crazy travel.

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Fears, expectations and contributions.

During our third day of the projects we had workshops about what we fear the most during next days of the project. What we expect to gain in the meaning of learn and what can be our contributions for the project to make it better and on a higher level.

We had a lot of common fears, contributions and expectation.

Starting with expectations a lot of us want improve our language skills to be closer of speaking fluently. Many from the participants also came here to gain an experience in debates and as our project is about debates it is a perfect place to gain this kind of experience. Except the previous two a lot of participants wrote that youth exchange is a perfect opportunity to get new friends and to exchange culture fun facts about polish and ukrainian culture.

Talking about fears. The main fear is the ability to communicate in english. A lot of participants are afraid of speak as in many cases it is their first time when they have possibility to use english to communicate with other. Participants wrote also on the papers that they have a fear of being not understand and not accepted to the rest of the group.

Some of ours participants wrote also about being not treated seriously by others. Only a few wrote about being hungry and about being bullied.

During the reading of their fears Me and Weronika were trying to dispell the fears and as the next days showed we made it!

Taking to the contributions. It seems that our project has very differential people with many diversed skills. Few people wrote that they are good at taking photos. As we asked our Ukrainian partner, organization Creativ, for diversed people in debating we have them. Many among us has already taken part in debates and they are very likely to spread the experiences and skills with others. Also, many of us are very good at writing articles, painting and conducting the workshops. As they next days showed their experience was very important to rise the standard of our project. As a very interesting fact I can say that we have also one poet in the group who is very likely to help us with work during project. 

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Group article about accommodation

Witamy w zaciszu!

       Our group traveled into Poland in order to develope debates skills. After the Arrival into przemysl we were pleased  to reach the Zwierzyniec in a comfortable bus with the polite driver. In this town we were accommodated into cosy hotel “zacisze”. This place is famous for its fresh air and beautiful natural views which we could see from our balconies. Besides the apartments are really great and have enough space. Each of us had an opportunity to live with our polish friends, that helped us to improve intercultural communication.

        The hotel offers small gym, sauna, pool, conference hall, playground and relax zone, where you can have bonfire at night. Also there is a restaurant, where we have breakfast, lunch and dinner cooked in polish traditions. Working here on our project is a great pleasure, especially when we have walks at national park. 

        Light and friendly atmosphere will make our project “let’s debate” really successfull.

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