[EN] Day 01: The participants arrived in the place of the project and got to know parts of the city, Guimarães, Portugal

[PT] Dia 01: Os participantes chegaram ao local do projeto e conheceram partes da cidade, Guimarães, Portugal

Article by Team Hungary
(Heemanshu, Rami, Norbi, Dorka, Liza, Lili)

"Followed by my dreams I was creating my life step by step and this is the moment I feel ready for a new period to come. I grew up in an environment where people are being taught how to live their lives. It's necessary to get a prestige education and a good job after. Society often tells you what kind of family you should have when to marry and how much money will make you able to call yourself happy. But if that doesn’t work for you, you can always choose your own path and challenge yourself.
I often heard we would have time to find ourselves and discover the world as soon as we finish school, then college, then after getting work experience, marriage, having children... All this time we are waiting for the moment to ask ourselves: is this my real life or I'm just having a role in this play, written by somebody else? And once I thought... What if I try to live according to my own values instead of doing what is familiar and safe? This is the choice many people
standing in front of every complicated moment of their lives.
And my life genuinely transformed the day I learned about the ERASMUS + youth exchange programs. In addition to the three youth exchanges, I took part in last year, I'll tell you about my most recent experience, which involved my fourth youth exchange. The initiative, "EmpowerMe: Media and Digital Literacy for Inclusion and Diversity," was run by Nucleo de Incluso in Guimares, Portugal, with funding from the Erasmus + Program. From July 11 to July 18, 2022, it attracted 45 participants from Austria, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Romania, and Spain.
Because Afonso Henriques, the nation's first king, was born in Guimares, it is regarded as the birthplace of the Portuguese people and an important historical city. Additionally, the Battle of So Mamede, which played a crucial role in the establishment of the Kingdom of Portugal, took place close to the city. About 158 thousand people live in Guimares, which has a 240,955 km2 area; there are about 11 million people living in Portugal. In 2001, UNESCO designated Guimaraes' Historic Center as a World Heritage Site. The city is proud of a complex of buildings with remarkable preservation of its heritage value thanks to ongoing urban management
practices.
Palavras Infinitas - Nucleo de Incluso, Comunicaço e Media was established in 2015. Their mission is to protect and advance the rights and interests of persons who experience exclusion on all fronts, including the social, cultural, and economic ones, with a special emphasis on those with disabilities. Palavras Infinitas' major objective is to dismantle social exclusionary barriers and encourage de-racialization of individuals through information and communication.
Additionally, it encourages social inclusion and works to eliminate prejudice and the ensuing discrimination, helping to build an equitable and diverse society.
The project was mainly facilitated by the wonderful sisters Sofia Pires (Project Manager and Trainer) and Cláudia Pires (Project Manager and Facilitator). We also had several guests of honor with different educational backgrounds. And luckily for us, during this youth mobility, we reflected on the issue of disinformation and discrimination in the media and social networks, with the aim of understanding how these platforms influence intolerant and stereotyped behavior in society and how we, as a civil society, can be a “space for the articulation of voices” to transform this reality.
As a whole group of youth with different backgrounds, we really immersed in different kinds of activities suggested by the facilitators or the national teams, such as being divided into groups and drawing a whole story of 8 parts without verbally communicating with each other’s, or during the unique presentations about the dangers of the media and the internet done by other groups, where we had even more chances to get to know each other, not to mention the delightful culture
nights presented by the different national teams.
I, along with 44 other young people, had the opportunity to receive media and digital literacy training as a result of Nucleo's amazing project, which promotes informed and active civic involvement in the interest of social inclusion and diversity. Additionally, I hope that everyone was able to reaffirm common European values through this initiative and eradicate conscious bias, stereotypes, discrimination, and/or bullying toward other groups. I will do my best to spread these values to my surroundings."