We are a half way thru...

It's the fifth day! Time seems to be flying by.  We are having a great time. Everyone is getting on really well. We're learning a massive amount of stuff about each country. All the presentations were impressive. Similarities in our problems as well as in the obstacles we face are striking. However there are some major differences which we in England can't even imagine in this day and age. For instance, Belarus doesn't allow any NGO`s to pay salaries to staff, in Ukraine the government`s attitude towards NGO`s is to let them be. The ordinary people don't really understand what YMCA is all about, compare to Britain where in a worst case scenario someone will put their hands up and start singing the song, in Eastern Europe it can be looked at with suspicion and compared to religious sects. Nevertheless our YMCA colleagues are doing a fantastic job and achieved an unbelievable amount of wonderful work we are so proud of their dedication and commitment! Particularly the Moldovan team activities were really different and impressed everyone.Of course it has to be mentioned the cultural differences and perspectives sometimes are getting in the way to understand our realities. My presentation, in particular the example I gave for project management, which was a community fundraising project to transform our garden raised a lot of discussion and debate. To be precise it was difficult for our eastern European friends to understand how we could spend over £3K for planting flower beds and getting a professional landscaping company to lay down the patio from Indian stones. Despite me emphasizing that it was much more about partnership working, community fundraising and project management, it provided hot debates over two days! Good thing about it was that it generated topics for further discussions and showed us clearly how we see things differently. Adam also wanted to use my example to see if we can replicate it in EE. Hence we analysed why the project was important and actually delved into the reasons why it might not work. Which led us to discus in depth the obstacles I mention earlier on here.For me personally I was not surprised at all by the reaction nor their struggle to understand. Having come from the similar society and culture I know far too well the attitudes to expect anything else. It seems we have to change them within first... Though to be fair I'm having an unfair advantage over everybody else as after living in Britain for the past ten years now I know the attitudes and cultural intricacies of British society very well too. That's for another discussion... I must give a special mention to our visits to various local schools, cultural centre, sports centre, sports and medical college as well as the mine. We have been treated to a wide range of fabulous activities such as jazz gig, dance rehearsals, museum tour, floorball game, Ten sing performance and many more. It's difficult to choose one highlight as all of them were great but if I have to choose then the folk performance at the medical college did it for me so far for its exuberant and gregarious style and colorful costumes. Here's a little photo.This time I would like to leave with the thought Alexis used for her devotion, she played the song Open arms by Elbow and emphasized our aim to have open arms and hearts for young people. Whatever is our differences or similarities, the passion for young people comes thru in all of our projects. And our work continues for them...