“The Key. Exchange of skills, experience and cultural background” was a bilateral exchange attended by 36 young people from Poland and Hungary, who are involved in various forms of youth activity at the level both local and national on a daily basis.

The main topic of the exchange was the seven key competences of the European Union.

The young people involved in the project chose four of them, and then they devoted two full days of the exchange (4 x 2-day thematic blocks) to the chosen key competences. All activities at that time were closely related to the subject matter devoted to them. They began with a historical and cultural introduction, during which participants from Poland and Hungary presented to the rest of the people the characters who had a significant impact on the development of a given field in the history of each country, the most revolutionary companies, inventions and events. A particular value of the project was the fact that the Hungarian group also included students staying in Hungary as part of the Erasmus Student Exchange. Thanks to this, we got to know not only Polish and Hungarian, but also Pakistani, Indian, Kenyan and Ethiopian history related to the development of key competences in these countries. The next item on the agenda were soft skills workshops, conducted in turn by each national group who decided to devote to a specific competence. Each theoretical workshop on soft skills ended with a group task prepared by the leaders, within which our teams were competing with each other.

The afternoon workshops focused on practical skills. They were organized by the international pairs of exchange participants who had submitted them at the preparation stage – each of them taught us an activity in which they felt best. The participants shared with us many ins and outs of many fields, including brewing specialized coffee, parliamentary debates, Cyrillic, and plaster sculptures. In addition, there were attractions such as cultural evenings, which allowed us to explore other elements of the culture of all the nations represented (Poland, Hungary, Ethiopia, Kenya, India and Pakistan).

The project was summarized in a case study document describing the process of preparing this exchange. It is a source of knowledge and inspiration – after all, the main assumption of this project was to teach each other skills useful in further social activities. Both this and the introduced elements of competition provided the participants with an opportunity for intensified group work and continuous exchange of good practices.