Stronger together

Little do we realize how much we get to know ourselves just by being open to new interactions and new experiences. The Erasmus+ program “Act-No-React”, organized by Gamma Institute just reminded me of that!

I travelled very little in my life up until this point; this had me rather limited with my social and intercultural interactions. The program had 21 participants from 7 countries from the European Union. I was overwhelmed by the beautiful and colorful personalities of the people I met in this program and I am so grateful for the opportunity of getting to know their stories. While talking to them I managed to see similarities between us and found experiences within my life that were alike.

We talked about bullying - as an issue in our countries and we were shocked to see how much this concerns all of us. We looked at the actors involved in bullying, we shared our personal experiences - when we were witnesses, victims, bullies, how this impacted us in our educational system and even in our families. We also had a look on a deeper level and brought some awareness to our own thoughts and how we bully ourselves..

Even if we have different backgrounds and life experiences, it seems that somehow we face similar problems within our societies. As we presented our perspectives of bullying in our countries, I could notice how our inner sense of justice got triggered and how something just activated within ourselves - the will to leave our differences aside and fight together to prevent this issue from happening again. I could see the impact this new awareness just brought to us - I could feel the momentum driving us towards action!