In the afternoon of the last day of our training course “Comedy as a Tool – Enhancing Youth Engagement through Humor”, we went directly to the local high school “Naum Naumovski Borče” in Krushevo where we were meeting the students after their classes.
After everyone gathered, split into 2 groups in separate rooms, we have introduced ourselves and started with getting to know each other. We started our planned activities with fun and dynamic energizers to set a positive and relaxing mood. Then we did few names games and ice-breakers, so we can learn each other’s names and a bit about ourselves. Both groups then did the main activities which were focused on intercultural learning, improving intercultural dialogue and discussing relevant topics that concern young people around Europe. At the end, we all got together to do a clowning activity (The Art of the Red Nose) which everyone enjoyed and filled the room with laughter and joy.
The students were more than happy to participate in our activities and it was a lovely way for us to practice our facilitation and communication skills. Everybody had a lot of fun, new friends were made and hopefully we got local youth interested to join future Erasmus+ projects. On one hand, it was great for us to practice what we have learned in the previous days during the training course and share it with high school students, but on the other hand, the students got a taste of how to work in an intercultural setting in a foreign language and had a lot of enthusiasm to join Erasmus+ activities in the future.
We are very thankful to high school “Naum Naumovski Borče for their amazing hospitality, the principal Snezhana Milenkovska for making this visit possible and all the students who took part in our activities.
After the visit of the school, we had some time to rest before going back to our working room to debrief the whole process, share our experiences of working with the students and think how we can use this experience back at home. And finally, it was time to evaluate the whole project. We did that verbally in the plenary through creative methods and with anonymous questionnaire in which we gave feedback about the organizational and logistic arrangements, levels of fulfilment of expectations, quality of the program, workshops and trainers, achieved learning outcomes and suggestions for improvement.
The very last part of our training course was the revealing of our secret friends and the ceremony for receiving the Youthpass certificates. We ended the night with a farewell party and saying goodbye to each other. With that, we have successfully closed the training course, happy to have taken part in it and looking forward to future encounters with the friends that we have made in the last days.
