Stowarzyszenie Inicjatyw Regionalnych

Intercultural dialogue

31.07 – 10.08. 2006, Smartno ob Paki, Slovenia

Between 31.07  and 10.08. 2006 our 5-persons representation of SIR took part in international youth exchange organized by Slovenian MATAFIR association, that also invited groups from Norway, Latvia and Italy. The main topic of that project were ethnic and religious minorities. However during these 10 days we were also involved in other problems, e.g. media and their influence on society. Additionally the program consisted of theatre, music, dance, project and newspaper workshops. As a great attraction we also consider drum-lesson and jazz concert. Though the weather was not good we went for trips to Celje and Valjenie – here we visited defensive castle and salt mine. Of course we could not forget about intercultural education so each evening belonged to different nationality groups. Everybody tried to prepared something special and not only to eat or drink, but also some games and competitions. We, as a Polish team, did our best and surprised the rest by sending them in the road to follow the red lights. At the beginning they were quite afraid but came back singing “Polska bialo-czerwoni”. Some of participants were even able to repeat “W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz…”. On the last day we hosted a representative of local government who watched our performance (that we prepared during creative workshops) with other inhabitants. During the last night nobody was sleeping and there were some tears when we said “goodbye”…

Joanna Bereta, Agnieszka Matlęga, Renata Matlęga, Dominika Wrzesińska, Piotr Tarkowski