Personal branding for my international experience – Day 5

For most of the group the day nr 5, when the project was slowly coming to an end, was a day out, where they could explore the Cluj-Napoca city and do different kind of tasks to have fun and improve their skills.

But me and four other people from Latvian team decided to go to the mountains as most of us had never seen them before. So we – 5 girls, rented a car and off we went. Little did we know that this experience would test our communication, team working, physical skills, patience and that we would experience a lot of real wow moments.
Our first big challenge was reading a blurry map without a certain understanding where exactly in the map was our location point and what was the scale of the map. At some point, as you can see in the picture   we needed to use some team working skills, to read the map. It spite of our incredible outdoor orientation abilities, intuition and skill set to survive in the wild, we got lost. Our only chance to move forwards to our goals was to ask for local people help. Mountain and village people do not speak English or Russian or any other language except Romania. So it was the right moment to test what we have learned during the days in workshop. We became extremely expressive. We used our non-verbal and para-verbal communication methods and the local people who were very nice and tried to help us did the same. Without their help and ability to understand each other we would probably be still wondering in the mountains till this day.
We moved on and an idea to see some caves appeared, but it was not as easy as one could think. We could not find them easily and for this, we had to be patient and assertive. While on our way, we were amazed by the beauty of Romanian nature but for some moments it seemed that instead of the caves we will find the Dracula castle or Dracula himself.

Not only did we see the mountains – there were animals as well.

We learned that a cow always has a best friend – another cow. And if the best friend is gone, they feel sad. All the cows we saw were walking in pairs, so this must be true.

We learned that sheep do not feel bothered by cars. And sheppards are neither bothered.
We came back from the mountains late, tired but happy, for discovering something more about Romani, one another and ourselves.

This was a journey that we will never forget!

By Liga Apsane

This project was financed by Erasmus+ programme of the European Commission

Euronews -Unemployment- DAY 2

This Autumn in the city of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, from 3 to 9 November took place the Youth Exchange “Personal Branding for my international experience” an initiative funded under the Erasmus+ programme by the European commission.
For one week a rich intercultural exchange happened for 36 enthusiastic young people from four countries of Europe: Italy, Latvia, Romania and Spain.

Over the days various dynamics, games, reflections, debates were performed. In one of these activities was discussed the situation of youth unemployment that is currently featuring in the four participating countries.
Participants presented the youth unemployment rate of their national countries, producing surprise between people

because we could see how big is the problem we are facing:

Italy – 40%
Latvia – 23.2%
Romania – 23.6
Spain – 55.5%

Source: Eurostat 2013 indices

Also after knowing the situation of youth unemployment in these countries, participants proposed some solutions and recommendations for young people to overcome the problem.

Many ideas came up:
• Create your own entrepreneurial project or business
• Share information with young people about the possibilities that exist in Europe to find employment or participate in initiatives promoted by the European Union
• Learning Languages to increase your possibilities
• Learn and build your own personal brand
• Take the initiative and submit a project to any company or organization
• Keep expectations realistic and do not expect to have a great job from the beginning

Then a brainstorm was made about the resources that can access to find a job around Europe:
• Create a profile on the professional social network LinkedIn
• Deals on Twitter
• Friends
• Teachers
• Jobs in the Newspaper
• University employment bureau
• Perform pre-professional internship
• Through previous jobs
• Volunteering in an NGO or project
• Apply for scholarships and grants from the government of the country or the European Union
• Ask for help in youth information points
• Looking directly into Google
• Visiting the following websites: Help Exchange Woolfing, workaway, Volint.

Finally this youth exchange was very important for all the participants, because many of us become able to orient better about our career aspirations and actively participate in job search.

I really recommend you to live this kind of experience if you want to know more about you and your professional aspirations!

 By Karen Salas

This project is financed by Erasmus+ program of the European Commission.

Personal Branding for my international experience- DAY 4

Morning. After waking up and taking a shower  I was – outside of hotel, in Romania’s second city – Cluj-Napoca.

This morning was a bit different – it was a cold one. Most of participants were already in the lobby and you can see a fear in their faces, a fear of “funbox”.

After a breakfast we had a little celebration – we give Annija a little surprise, because it was her birthday.

The work can start! At first – short overview what we had done, after – wrote 20 qualities that we have. After these 20 qualities each choose 5 best ones, start to work in the groups and talk about it. Interesting part was that many of us didn’t realize that we have good things that we didn’t see.  After this exercise we wrote strategies how we can “promote” ourselves. There main ideas was that we need to change our point of view, take a step outside our comfort zones, learn new languages, lose our shyness and put a hard work to break impossible! Of course we have a good laught about this one.

After coffee break start to talk about creative marketplaces and about job abroad. We give each other a view about where we look for a job in our countries. Sites about a job abroad – mladiinfo.eu , eurodesk.org, EURES etc.

In the end of the day our task was to  make a ”commercial”  about a magic product. Andreea and Doru gave us some information about “Erasmus+”, Volunteer job abroad (EVS), and Youth pass.

That was my short look of the day. Thank you and love you guys.

 By Roberts Jurkevics

This project was financed by Erasmus+ program of the European Commission.

What do I get from participating in international projects?

Everybody know…
International projects are fun because bring lot of friends and nice moments in an amazing intercultural space.
Have you ever wonder…

What people learn from participating in Youth Exchanges, Training courses, or other Erasmus+ projects?

Well, here you can check what some participants say.

After evaluating their learning outcomes, people realize they get competences for life.

Mihai (Romania)
• Capacity to speak in English and make myself understood. Improving my accent.
• Ability to speak in English without to constantly translate words from my native language.
• Ability to organize my own learning and feel responsible for that.
• Using non-formal methods for learning.
• Positive attitude toward learning.
• How to learn in a funny and productive way.
• Knowledge about different cultures and their own way of thinking and living.
• How to use creativity as a tool for developing projects.
• Ability to use music, games, acting and dancing for the learning process.

Alex (Greece)
• To interact linguistically in appropriate way by expressing feelings and thoughts in public.
• To evaluate the outcomes of my learning.
• To become creative and acting as actor in a short movie.
• How to be innovative and creative because I got ideas about creating my own Erasmus+ project.
• To express my cultural identity most of all by participating in the intercultural night.

Anna (Spain)
• I dared to take risks.
• I learned to deal with obstacles when activities become too difficult for me.
• Being responsible for my own language and not making mistakes in front of the others.
• To understand other cultures and behaviors.
• To deal with obstacles when activities become too difficult for me.
• The ability to understand and appreciate the importance of creative expression of ideas, emotions and experiences.

Still not convincing for you?

TRY IT ! and let us know…what did you learn?

Declaration of participants from personal Branding 4EUth employment 3, Erasmus+ Youth Exchange, Barcelona, 2014

Personal Branding my CV

This video is a result of the Erasmus+ youth exchange ¨ Personal Branding for my international experience¨, activity Digital Photo Story on the topic My Europass CV – Describing skills.

Video by Marco Dimola

This project was financed by Erasmus+ program of the European Commission.

Personal Branding for my international experience 2014

First Day- just simple as it’s wrote

First day always remains the first day.

I think the “definition” comes from somewhere, where you as a human being have to fit in the new place, with new people, and new schedule, everything that’s new from that “first day”.

That happened to us, as well, 36 young people trying to find out new and totally strange names, trying to adapt to the new air, new food, and new town noise. But it wasn’t difficult, because we had our super-human-beings trainers, Andreea and Doru, who in a very non-formal way tried to combine the four countries into just one, where the main way to survive was communication.

And thus, as a “democratically country” we started to set up our internal and functional rules, such as “bora, bora” rule, I would rather say ‘’bora, bora” group of words which we had to use when two or more people were speaking in their maternal language, the foreigner one just simply say the words and they have to stop talking like that. Another essential rule was that during the project, even after it, even in day by day life we had to respect the other persons which no matter if are or not in the front or behind us. And because any country doesn’t grow without responsibility, we made another mandatory law, like everyone should be responsible of themselves, what they do, what they have to do and so on. Once the functional rules were set up, we had our lesson about formal, non-formal, and informal education and of course, a lot of activities based on that and I must say, many, many energizers, which at the final part of the activities and at the end of day seemed to be very constructive.

With all these said from the first day, we jump into a wonderful, international, and multicolored week, 36 of beautiful, young, and unquiet people.

See you soon and don’t forget: “Know yourself, brand yourself!”

 By Elena Ursu

This project was financed by Erasmus+ program of the European Commission.

Personal Branding for my international experience

Personal Branding for my international experience, Erasmus+ youth exchange has just finished his activities.

36 special people, 4 countries, 6 days of special moments all in one special edition of the project.

You are invited to enter in the backstage, take a look and some inspiration from everything that happened in Romania, Cluj-Napoca this autumn.

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This project was financed by the Erasmus+ program of the European Commission.