Have you ever asked yourself: “Where to? Where do I go?” Lately I’ve been asking myself this question so often, that I ended up clouding my mind and feeling even more lost than before. At the end of the day I was feeling stucked and at the same time I didn’t know how to change my state of mind and react to this negativity. I felt like a buoy, diving in the water, floating in the waves, but being anchored to the ground untill having algae growing on its surface. It’s been some time now I’ve been focusing on try to figure out what was happening, and in the end I didn’t find an answer; I just tried to be kind to myself and listen to that inner voice that was telling me I wanted something more. What I would say today thinking about an answer to that question is: “If you never try you’ll never know”.
Sometimes when you don’t know where to go, the only thing to do is start going. You will realize that when you don’t have a clear destination, you stop set up your mind with expectations and you stop hurry up for reaching a milestone. The journey itself becomes the real milestone. You will discover you’re able to merge in the world around you; you will realize you are part of this world and you will learn to enjoy the little things. You will be open to connect your inner universe with others universes so different from yours, that usually you wouldn’t even look at them. The greatest discovery you will achieve by listening and sharing with others your true self, is the realization that, despite all the differences which define and distinguish ourselves , we are all the same in our vulnerability and insecurities and we are all trying to find our way to fight our personal battle. This is why it’s so important to practice kindness; no need to be mean, we are all facing our own war. When you join this path, at the end of the day eventually, you’ll realize that it doesn’t matter where you go as long as you just keep moving forward.
A WORLD OF OPPORTUNITIES IN OUR PARALLEL UNIVERSE
The previous premise was meant to introduce the experience I lived at the beginning of May in Greece, thanks to the Erasmus+ Program and the greek hosting organization KINITRO . I really want to share this experience, first of all, because it marked a turning point in my perspective and my approach to life, and then because I believe is important to spread more awereness about the opportunities that EU offers to youngsters between 18 and 30 years old. Every year the European Union financiates the implementation of different projects designed from various organizations across Europe. These projects, accepted because in line with some specific requirements, are aimed to enhance cross-disciplinary and soft skills, to increase youth employability, to stimulate personal growth, while giving the opportunity to join a intercultural network of passionate people from different backgrounds, willing to gather for a sustainable change.
The project I’ve been involved in, was called “Pan Rights”, from the greek “παν-” which stands for “everything”, to highlight the concept of “universalism”, implicit in the notion of human rights. The prefix “pan” refers at the same time to the pandemic experience we’ve been through, since the project was aimed to analyse in which measure the pandemic, as an example of any kind of crises, affected the fulfilment of civil and social rights in our daily life, especially for minorities and disadvantaged cathegories. We’ve been living for 8 days a community life in Nisi glamping, in Stylida coast, where we could reconnect ourselves with nature while setting some basic rules in order to preserve a safe space where everyone could feel free to express his feelings and thoughts. During the project we’ve been busy with different kinds of workshops like simulations of a negotiation between states for managing an humanitarian crises, others about running our own fund raising campaign to promote a solidarity project, handcraft activities and so on. We had the opportunity to join for a day the Labyrinth of Senses workshop created by the greek ngo KINITRO. Labyrinth of Senses is a disABILITY AWEREness training in the form of a Workshop, launched in 2014 by Gabriela Telekfalvi, founder of Kinitro, with the aim to spread awareness about disability and the potential inside every person, regardless of the background, social status, ethnicity, age, educational level and the existence or absence of a disability.
“According to WHO “more than a billion people in the world today experience disability. These people generally have poorer healthcare, lower education achievements, fewer economic opportunities, and higher rates of poverty. This is largely due to the barriers they face in their everyday lives, rather than their disability. ”
Through the use of non-formal and informal education methods, the mission in Kinitro is to create an inclusive and accessible society, where everyone has the opportunity to improve their attitudes and enhancing their skills. Participating to Labyrinth of Senses gave us the opportunity to see the world from a different perspective , to gain a better understanding of the daily challenges people with disability are exposed to. At the end of the activities, we all realized that disability shouldn’t be consider like a deficit, since people with disabilities can do the exact same things all the others can do, and as everyone else they’ll find their way to do that. So once again the lesson learnt is that taking a single step outside our comfort zone can hold so many surprises!