Testemunho de participação - Nadja Rein

My dear friends,

Have you ever thought that while travelling around representing your organisation you can actually learn something which might totally change your life!

I am a traveller I was born in the Soviet Union and then when it collapsed I appeared to live in a new state, Kazakhstan. Due to several reasons my family immigrated to Germany (probably it is needed to say that I am also from Multicultural family, in general I can out it saying that I am Russian-German). In Germany I had to learn to live with a new culture and learn German asap in order to be able to solve very simple problems, such as shopping, making appointments etc. But moreover I needed German because I wanted to study. When I was already at the University I learnt about Exchange Programme as ERASMUS and that led me to the UK, where I live and work till this moment. In the UK I had to cope with some cultural differences as well. And what was the most amazing about the place I got in is the fact that it is a very diverse place! You can meet people from different cultural and faith background here. Sometime it is difficult to live with people who have completely different ideas about what is your concept of life, because their concepts are different. In the beginning I couldn’t make living with my house mates who as I thought could not appreciate my concept of ‘clearness’, ‘nice and disgusting smells’ etc. But one day I realised that actually it is not all about them, but a huge part of our misunderstanding was because of me. Then I tried to talk to them to learn about their habits, thoughts, tastes in music, food, movies, clothes etc. And surprisingly, though no one of us has change their concepts of life, we began to feel closer and to understand better each other.

Then one day, when I was finishing my first year at Loughborough University, my tutor who was also a chair at Charnwood Racial Equality Council asked me whether I would like to volunteer for one international project which was to take place in summer. I liked the idea to work with native speakers and decided to take an opportunity to improve my language skills. In the beginning I couldn’t understand what all that was about, mostly because I was working on the arrangements of facilities rather than with content of the project. I also took part in the project as a participants and though I got loads of information about the racial issues and the different work methods against racism in the UK from experts and trainers and about other European countries from the participants of the event I was still not completely sure about the Youth in Action Programme as such.

Being in touch as a volunteer with CREC during my second year at the University I was engaged in a number of local projects and also attended some international event in Moscow and in Turkey. That increased my knowledge about the Programme and its great possibilities for us, young people. The British young people are not really active in participation in different international projects, partly because they are not aware of them. While talking to my friends at the University and local young people I came across due to my work with CREC. My colleagues and I arranged some of them to go to Youth Exchanges in Poland, Turkey, Spain and some other European countries. They were amazed learning about different cultures and new people from all over the Europe. They build friendship and became more interested not only in international projects but also in local projects engaging people from different cultural backgrounds. As a result we applied for another project within Youth in Action Programme focusing on Intercultural learning. That was also due to the fact that my British friends while being abroad realised how few they know about their own culture, which they took for granted.

As I was already quite experienced in these kinds of projects I was a project director for that one. The event had great success and I was approached by people from the Charnwood Racial Equality Council offering me to apply for a post of Community Cohesion Officer. I still needed to submit my application and went through Interview, but those knowledge I gained while working as a volunteer with Youth in Action projects made me the best candidate for that post.

Now I work for the CREC and still work with Youth in Action Programmes giving other young people in Charnwood an opportunity to gain experiences which can benefit them on a personal level but also be a good start for their future careers. All that is without mentioning the fact, that Youth in Action Programme gave me also an opportunity to travel and see the world.
I hope to meet you very soon on one or another project based in the UK or other countries.

Best wishes

Nadja Rein

Community Cohesion Officer at Charnwood Racial Equality Council & Programme Director at Youth Across Frontiers (YAF), UK, Loughborough