Posts Tagged ‘ematchmaking’

Many people travel to London to do their Christmas shopping. They go to Harrods to buy toys, to Oxford Street for Christmas stockings and to Hyde Park for toffee apples. Not me. I travel to London to give trainings about YouthNetworks!

As I was walking towards the conference hotel, I saw the first snow of the winter falling upon the fashionable people that roam the streets of London, and thought about how happy I was with this job. Life’s good when you’re abroad and it’s snowing. I felt all Christmassy, and a bit lost, as I didn’t exactly know where the hotel was. But a few phone calls further I found it. Lights and trees and mistletoes guided me along the majestic stairway, as I was taking of my hat and gloves. I was right on time, grabbed some coffee and took a seat.
I have to say the crowd was a bit tough, and the presentation didn’t go exactly as planned, but luckily some people attending came up to me in the break to tell me they liked it. Thank God for confirmation!
I couldn’t beat the presentation of one of the others though. A woman from Liverpool told a very interesting story about her project: Merseyside Polonia. She did her best to show the good side of the Polish immigrants in her city, by organizing food festivals, get-togethers and talking to media. She really made a lot of effort, and put her heart into it, and all the participants loved her story. More information about her project can be found on http://merseysidepolonia.com.
When the training was over, I walked to Hyde Park, to the Winter Wonder Land. There was a Christmas market, an ice rink, some carnival rides and a singing moose with a German accent (see picture). Excellent!
Before I left for home in the night, I was invited to a Christmas Party by one of the participants. It was very nice: the British like to meet up with their friends and eat a lot of food before they go home to their parents to celebrate the holidays. The play weird games, put on festive slingers and have a laugh. It was very nice. But I had to go home at some point, so I said goodbye to the snow in London and went back to my own country, which ironically, was in total chaos from the big amount of snow there. Oh well, life is never as usual as you think it is. Now let’s go out and have a snowfight! Merry Christmas everyone!

Last week, YouthNetworks gave it’s first presentation in it’s home country, and it happened to take place in the city where our headquarters are located: Utrecht! There was a training by the NJI,  (Dutch Youth Institute) and people from all over the country came there to share information, network with each other and offcourse to learn from several workshops, where YouthNetworks was also represented in the workshop about Youth in Action & New Media.
If you would also like to implement the eMatchmaking training in your training or seminar, feel free to ask us any time!

My latest travel for spreading the word about YouthNetworks was to Austria. In the small village of Gresten in Niederösterreich, in a seminarhouse on a hill, I found around 25 people from all over Europe learning everything there is to learn about the Youth in Action programme and rural culture. I decided to teach them some more. In return, I learned to dance like an Austrian by clapping my hands on my legs and shouting ‘yeeee-hoo-hoo-hoo!’
Due to some technical problems, I had to skip my powerpoint presentation and explain everything with paper and a marker, but it worked out fine. The participants were happy with me, I was happy with the participants, and we had a lot of fun and talking. It’s funny how you meet so many interesting people, even in a place so remote as Gresten.
I would have loved to stay for the farewell party in the evening, but I had other plans: was visiting my old roommate from my time as an EVS-volunteer in Sweden, in Vienna. I consider her as one of my best friends, and I’m too happy to move to Vienna in February so I can see her a lot more often. I looked for a room, talked with my study adviser, walked through the whole city, practiced my German and made some new friends. I love Vienna.
Now I’m back to my life of studying, meetings, dentist appointments and late trains. Oh well. Luckily I have some new eMatchmaking trainings coming up the next months: in Utrecht, London and Oslo/Trondheim!