Intercultural evening in Pogradec

Intercultural evening is event in which everybody presents its country.

Among this program every participant has the opportunity to learn more about the culture of other participants.At first we have night with three countries.Serbia, United Kingdom and Romania

Serbian participants represent the country with traditional dance, Serbian meet and drink (Rakia)

After this it was great pleasure and fun to listen more stories about United Kingdom.

The last in this day Romania they share some stories about Romanian people.

We tasted  chocolates and drinks, the Romanian drink is the similar to Serbian (Rakia )but little too soft.

Second intercultural night Albania, Turkey and Italy were representing them countries. Albania is hosting this project and they were prepared well. We saw some video about Albania after that we tasted everything.

This second night was ,rich’’ . After Albania we saw some great video about Sardinia. We like it a lot. People from Sardinia prepare the most delicious chees.

Cheese was prepared in home conditions.

Macedonia and Kosovo was last in this work project.We chose to present with guys from Kosovo.

 

 

 

Art in Pogradec through youth exchange

 

Pogradec, an Albanian city on the Ohrid lake, is a place where you can experience a little part of Balcanic art. The best way to enter in contact with the art in this city is through youth exchange.

 

The first thing that you can see are the mosaics on the road to Pogradec, bright and colorful, representing symbols of hope, luck, nature etc.

One of the tasks that you are going to get in a youth exchange is treasure hunt; in that way you can explore the most interesting parts of Pogradec that are waiting to be discovered by you. You can see the church, the mosque and if you are walking next to the beach there are a lot of beautiful statues which you can see, for example Lasgush Poradeci who was a writer born in Pogradec. There are a lot of streets in Pogradec with nice caffes and restaurants but the most interesting one is the European street; if you look at the floor you can see plates with names of the most important people of the world. The youth exchange can give you the opportunity to explore not only the city where you are, but also to learn something about tradition and culture of the other participant countries through intercultural evenings. You will discover a lot of different  dishes, drinks, music, dances, history and you can hang out and have fun with new friends that you have met.

There is not only the physical exploration of the city. Infact, through the theater workshops you can express yourself using what the city can offer to you. You will try different methods in order to learn something more about the main topics of your youth exchange.If you want to try a different kind of adventure apply for some youth exchange like this one because it will change your way of thinking and make you richer.

 

Sonja Sokolov  Michele Cugusi

Human rights and theatre

Thanks to the organization Youth for Society, here we have the chance to talk about the Human Rights which is one of the most popular subjects and which is the most neglected one at the same time. In addition to the productive activities that we do here, we also enjoy the beautiful atmosphere and nature of Pogradec. Here we have the chance to meet people from different countries, cultures and backgrounds. Working in a international group helps us widen our perspective and get information about how the human rights are approached in the other countries.

The human rights are the comprehensive set of rules that enables people to live in a way that they deserve. Here we mean that all people must have some certain rights such as right to live, freedom of speech, freedom to vote, private ownership rights and so on. However, we must be careful with the definition of freedom because freedom does not give people the right to do whatever they want. One’s freedom is limited with the freedom of the others, no one can violate the freedom of someone else.

Although the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed in 1948, even today, after more than 60 years, we still witness that human rights are violated around the world in one way or another. We must admit that we, all the people living on earth, failed at implementing or at helping the implementation of the human rights. Today, we witness that women are forced to marry with the people that they do not want to, that people’s being forced to work many hours by their employers and that people’s being arrested just because they think the opposite of what some authorities think. Therefore, it means that we have a problem here. We should not keep our mouths shut anymore; instead of ignoring the situation until our rights are violated, we must react and encourage people to react together against any kind of human rights violations.

Here in Pogradec, we performed some plays to understand and appreciate the importance of the human rights. In the plays, some of us were the victims and some were the perpetrator of the human rights violations. In the plays in which we acted, we had the opportunity to see the situation from different perspectives and we witnessed the situation from the eyes of either the victims or the perpetrators of the violations. We would like to thank to all people helping us to get together and raise awareness about the human rights and many thanks to Alex for sharing his laptop with me.

Fazil Ahmet Tercan                 Muala Sejfuli                                       Burak Atmaca

OUT WITH THE OLD – IN WITH THE NEW: Are Traditional Values More Important Than Human Rights?

Revolutions happen all of a sudden – they are violent and can take many lives; some of them bring better future. But there are those revolutions that are silent – they last for years, generations and they are not visible by most of the people.

One of the most important revolutions of our time is the fight of establishing human rights as the essential law everywhere. The fight for the human rights is as old as civilization but it got its final shape during the last century when we became more globalized and constantly inovating some new luxurious things to enrich our life. One must come to thinking how is it possible that nowadays when we live in the era of modern technologies where long distances are connected with the internet, where you take for granted every single thing there are a lot of people who wake up every day fearing for their own existance.

There are so many places, so many stories about the unability to practice the basic human rights one is granted since the first breathe made on this world but there is one part of the world where tradtitional values are the ones not allowing a lot of people to feel safe, loved and most of all, to simply be human beings. Recently, those countries of proud people started opening themselves towards the west and started using the term „human rights“, but sadly they are so far away from saying that they respect the human rights.

Nowadays there are a lot of movements, organizations and societies, both local and international that are raising awareness of human rights and their importance. The aim of those organizations is to educate young people, but in many cases both formal and informal education these young people receive is telling them that some human rights are ‘wrong’. The tradition of some countries is strong, more influential than the human rights or any other law.

These couple of days, young people from Albania, Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia, Turkey, Romania, Italy and UK gathered in Pogradec, a lovely Albanian city on the Ohrid lake to discuss how theatre can help us in raising awareness of human rights.

When asked about is tradition opposing human rights all of them agreed that traditional values are the ones that are stopping our societies to reach the full respect of the human rights. Bree from Albania and Fazil from Turkey agreed that patriarchal societies in their countries are the ones preventing any progress when it comes to gender equality. Milkica from Macedonia said that people are too afraid even to talk about the human rights violation in the media. Sonja from Serbia thinks that the society is the one who is aware of the violations but simply chooses to look away when the situations happen. Misha from Romania and Artina from Kosovo both agree that it’s not tradition that is opposing but the people and the mentality. Ryan from UK said that when it comes to gender equality men should be more aware of the inequality and try to fix it.

After hearing all of this, we must come to thinking is it the right time try and shape our new traditional values that will have in the basis all the human rights. It is the responsibility of this generation to create a set of new values and traditions – for the sake of humanity.

 

Aleksandar Brzaković

Admirim Xhaferi

Vjollca Mustafai