FIRKA | DUDE! – Discover, Understand, Diversity, Erasmus

During the exchange program, the participants got to know various subcultures, got a new understanding of how cultural differences play role in people’s socialization. Programs improved their tolerance and supported their accepting attitude toward “other” people, and helped them to establish a behavior free of prejudice. In our opinion, we have fully achieved this goal with our project, since by the end of the program, young people became more accepting and open-minded thanks to those program elements which they had been active participants and shapers.

The participants worked in mixed, 7-member groups, and made a video project, where they had to draw attention to the wrong stereotypes regarding subcultures and emphasized the importance of acceptance of each other. The videos concerned various topics, such as discrimination of minorities,hooligans or gambling addicted people. The completed videos were presented to the local high school students and the mayor on the 7th day of the program.

The camp was located in the ‘Fürdőkerti Ifjúsági Szabadidőközpont’, Hajdúböszörmény. A total of 35 participants from 5 countries (Hungary, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia) took part in the exchange program.

The participants worked in mixed, 7-member groups, and made a video project, where they had to draw attention to the wrong stereotypes regarding subcultures and emphasized the importance of acceptance of each other.
The videos concerned various topics, such as discrimination of minorities,hooligans or gambling addicted people.
The completed videos were presented to the local high school students and the mayor on the 7th day of the program.

„The topic of the exchange was about subcultures, how we should get along, understand and tolerate them. This was a complex material for everybody, but we were able to handle this task. Everybody had a great point of view and we shared these ideas with each other and most of these have changed the opinion about subcultures of many participants. Mostly we were working in mixed groups, so we had the chance to get to know each others thinking and more about each other personally. To process this topic, we did some educational, situational/role games, we made videos and we showed them for the local students, even the mayor of the city visited us. It was an honor to present our project to these youngsters, we were so happy that they appreciated our days of work. In summary our knowleadge about subcultures improved a lot, and we hope that the kids’ as well.”

Hungarian group

„We think that it was very interesting and inspiring experience. We had the chance to learn about to taste their tradicional food. We also learnt some words in different languages. But what is the most imporant we learnt a lot of subcultures isn’t as bad as most people think. It has many positive aspects like having friends who think the some way as you. We also broke many of those stereotyoes in video which we made in intertational groups. We are very pleased to be able to participate in this project. We learnt a lot, improved our laguage skills and most important we met wonderful friend from other countries. We hope this friendships will last very long we also hope that we will be able to take part in the next exchange.”

Polish group

„On this project we wanted to make new friendships with other participators from foreign countries, get new information about them, improve in English language. We’re really glad that we could take part of this project. We got new knowledge about main topics of this project (subcultures, stereotypes, respect), about this place and region and also about the countries of participants. We improved in English language and we got more skills in presentations of my opinions or my country in a foreign language.”

Czech group

„For most of us this project was the first youth exchange we took part in and we are really glad that we had the opportunity to participate. We took part in this project because we wanted to learn more about the subcultures. Here we had the chance to be in other people's shoes and to feel empathy by making a video and all kind of presentations in which we got closer and closer to the subcultural way of life.”

Bulgarian group

„What we enjoyed the most was that each evening was focused on one country. We learned some basics, tried traditional food and had much fun. Honestly, we would like to make this project happen again!”

Slovakian group