International visitors in Karakert Community Center
About thirty young people from Armenia, Georgia, Hungary and Slovakia spent a week in Stepanavan, Armenia to exchange their culture, traditions and patterns of thinking, between the 10th and the 17th of October, 2012. One of the most interesting and unique event of the week was held on a Monday afternoon on the 15th of October, when the international group visited the town of Karakert with the purpose to connect with local children and youth.
During the event, people form different countries shared pieces of their culture with the local participants of the event, like music, dances, games, and artistic workshops were also held. These workshops were cross-cultural in a double sense: on one side, the Armenian children and youth got closer to Georgian, Hungarian and Slovak traditions, while on the other hand, many of the activities were presented by already mixed teams - for example, Armenians took part in presenting Hungarian folk dances as well, and so on.
While the Georgian participants were more familiar with the cultural conditions on the region, for participants from the two Central European countries, it was both a unique experience and challenge as well, to connect with people from a different group of age, in an environment, which wasn’t usual at all for them. In addition, they needed the help of the Armenian team members to overcome the language barriers, which partly came from the age of the children - most of them didn’t have a proper level of English to communicate with the other volunteers, simply for the reason, that they couldn’t have enough education in foreign languages so far.
Nevertheless, for many international participants this time was the most interesting of the day, when they could go in to short conversations with the local children and youth.
During these discussions, the visitors had the opportunity to find out more from the interests and social situation of the local children and youth, and find out, if they know anything about their countries. ’It’s in Europe, and Budapest/Bratislava is its capital’ was the most frequently repeated association from the Armenian children for the question, ’What do you know about Hungary/Slovakia?’, which pretty much impressed the visitors, because, most of Hungarian or Slovak children wouldn’t know this neither about Armenia, nor Georgia. The list of associations about Georgia was of course a bit longer, for the children have more information about a neighbouring country.
Personally, I enjoyed that part of the activity, when I could talk with an 11 years old boy, and a 16 years old girl, about how they live their life. Same family size, like our standards (1-1 brother or sister), a bit younger age compared to their year in school (the 11 years old boy was already in 7th grade, after beginning school at his age of 5, which is slightly different from the Central European practice, where the age of 6 is the minimum, although children tend to begin school at their age of 7), and more or less different way of activities, and spending their time. Of course, both of them have their facebook-account, and the boy watches all of the FC Barcelona-games, just as I do (which was also an interesting point - a football game
beginning at 22:45 in my local time, during a weekday would be too late for me, but there are no barriers for enthusiasm), but the limited access to some ’civilizational’ goods could make children and young people spend their time in a more civilised and humanistic way. This means, that the lack of limitless access to computer and internet could make people free using more their creative and physical abilities, like taking part in creative sessions, read a lot, and develop their imagination through this, or play football with their classmates after school - just some of those activities, which were mentioned by these two teenagers. And especially for boys, sports could be something worth to invest time and energy in, which was expressed for me in the poster of Armenian Olympic champions in wrestling, which was hung on the wall of the training room of this Armenian national sport.
After all, this event was very beneficial for both the volunteers and the participants: the volunteers gained very unique and complex experiences, while the local children and youth had also a special opportunity to meet foreign people and cultures, which isn’t usual at all in their usual home environment. For the volunteers, it was beneficial to first exchange their own ideas and cultural values, interact first with each other, and then with local people. So it was an interesting case in itself, when Georgian people participated an artistic workshop
held by Slovakian, or Hungarian were trying to sing in Armenian. Though we couldn’t evaluate the event from the locals’ side, their enthusiasm surprised all of us. Nevertheless, the youngers were more attracted by the content of the workshops, while the older teenagers got stunned by the intercultural experience, we believe they are looking forward for a next visit of foreigners, in the spacious and newly built social center of Karakert.
The European youth exchange Connect and Improvise was organized with the financial support of Youth in Action program of European Commission.
By Andras Gal
THANK YOU András! - TE IS :-)
