The project entitled “The project’s journey” was a collaboration of national groups from Poland, Germany and Italy. As socially active people, active in non-governmental organizations, informal groups, student associations, and therefore leaders of their communities, we wanted and still want as many young people as possible in Europe to have a chance and have the courage to take advantage of the intercultural learning opportunities offered by the Erasmus+ Program and other initiatives of the European Union. We have already had the first experiences of this type – not only did we participate in Youth Exchanges and projects, but a large part of us also works to promote these opportunities by being Erasmus+ influencers as part of the EuroPeers initiative in our countries. When preparing this exchange, we wanted to infect our peers not only locally, regionally or nationally, but to enter the European level!

The first day of the exchange work was devoted entirely to acquaintance and integration activities. The second, fourth, sixth, eighth and tenth day comprised the component of developing skills useful in the work of an activist, and even though they had a similar structure, they covered the whole spectrum of topics using different methods. We raised the following issues:

1. social media support and the use of digital tools;
2. video recording and processing;
3. photography and photo processing;
4. public appearances;

each subsequent day was devoted to only one thematic area. In the morning there was a theoretical workshop, and then we carried out a group task. The activities of each of these days were prepared and carried out by the participants themselves, divided into international groups composed of people with the greatest knowledge in each of these areas.

The remaining days, i.e. the third, fifth, seventh and ninth days, had a different structure and topics. During them, we focused primarily on creating a compendium of knowledge that allows you to easily enter the world of Erasmus – the portal which you are browsing now! During the workshop sessions, we raised the following issues:

1. methods of transforming ideas into a project;
2. methods of preparing activities;
3. methods of finding reliable partner organizations;
4. evaluation methods;
5. integration methods.

These sessions were carried out using the Design Thinking method. We aggregated all the knowledge gathered during these activities on a shared Google Drive, and after the meeting, we carried out dissemination activities – focused on the final preparation of this guide made by young people for the young people.

Of course, during the meeting, we also had time to learn about the broadly understood culture of all countries, integration, discussions and joint activities – primarily during evening activities, i.e. cultural evenings, walks on the beach, common bonfires, watching movies or singing karaoke.