torsdag 25 mars 2010

Thursday March 25

Another day, another beautiful day. Sorry i had to leave the party a bit early, but rest asured, the greek wine i got with me will sustain me through this blog entry and then some (sorry Fiona, but i cant fool Jim on this one. The evidense are all over the crime scene. calling in a CSI team would be overkill).

I chose the Greek wine for tonight's blog entry, firstly because it was the first wine i recieved and the second reason is that they are leaving early, so i raise my glass and say "Yamas!" to you all and hope we meet again. I can also recommend bulgarian food. I have a taste for it and i like the smoked wursts and the cheese. Sad to see you go as well of course. I shall use your present for the friday's notes for this blog with varmth and fun memories.

Oh and i can recommend a good belly dancer that lives in bulgaria as well!

This day we've changed it up a bit and we used the Open Space method. For those that don't know what it is go here.

Before everything started we had like an hour in getting everything somewhat organized. i used this time totouch up some more on teh files for the blog.

The topics i went to were Unemployed Graduated Youth, with Patrizia from Italy as the group leader. Here we talked about the situations for graduates in diferent countries and the difficulties getting a job that is matched well with your education. Several countries had the situation where some actually got an education not because it's what they wanted, but it's what would give them a job.  

Some common swedish issues is that after getting an education and realising you're not gonna get a job in that area, you re educate yourself in a Vocational school. That is finished in about one and a half years. By this time, the job market has changed and now you have two graduations that isn't giving  you a job.

Some times we also run into the problem of being over educated. Employer don't want  too much education because such a person costs to keep in teh company. 

Some good solutions that were pointed out was that educations need a better communication with the labour market, but also that academic area of school needs to value some vocational parts of the education, and regard it close to the levels of how the labour market values work experience.

I myself agrees with this totally. i think that an increased discussion between education and labour market will improve students' chances to meet the employer's expectations. Not so much as to change what we learn, but more how we learn it. theoretical teachings is good at some levels, but in the end practical solutions is what is valued in the work force.

Next stop for me was a group with Jo talking about Transnational Music Projects. My background to such a progress that even tho i have moderate skills at playing guitar (i can't for the love of my life play a decent solo, i dont know scales, can't "shred" and i still can't mute properly) i'd want to attend a transnational youth exchange myself.

The Group started off as a brainstorm of ideas and my own practices with friends to send eachother some small pieces of music influenting eachother might actually work for such a project. In short:

A selected group of youths across europe who are willing to attend this event get to chat eachother up and form groups of varried musical backgrounds. one might be a rocker, another one a DJ, a third a techno composer, a third an opera student. the goal: to use the internet to start work on a production that focuses on fusing not only these styles (doesn't necessarily mean they need to mix the music itself, but instead use their gained techniques to produce something new) and most certainly with inspirations from their own cultures. 

Myspace and other such medias can be used. to finalize this they are sent on the week long event and there they get to finally meet and they can finalize practice and finetune the work, and finish off with a gig.

The group realised that funding for such aproject wont be an easy task, but the will is there, and the skills to organize it as well. i'd definatly want to visit and blog about that!

After lunch (swedish thursday tradition of pea soup wth pork, and pancakes with jam and whipped cream) I took the time to finalize some file uploads on the blog, and i found one of many spelling errors. I think i will be sitting and fixing little errors on this blog for a good while after the week is over. All of this was entertained by soe beautiful Bulgarian folk dancing by Fiona from Scotland and Maria from Bulgaria. With that amount of talent i woudn't want to switch my working environment with anyone even if it killed me!

What was interresting was the rythm of the bulgarian folk dance. it had some resemblance to some of our folkdancing and also the foxtrot (if i rmember my primary school's PE dance teacher correctly).

Next up: Motivating young people, sharing tools and experiance with Natalie. An interresting fact was that almost everyone had something positive to say about the technique of roleplaying in motivating youth. The only info i could bring to the table was my experiance with traditional ropleplaying (as in a group of geeks sitting around a table using different types of dice, a  sheet of paper, loud arguements and wide gestures, and in the end some dragon dies. Oh and there's always a decent stack of overpriced, well produced books that noone needs to open, because they'er geeky enough to already know everything in the books).

I think that what we reached as a conclusion, is that role playing helps youth realise what it means to listen to another person's opinon. two youngsters taking turns roleplaying as an employer will make them try and think as an employer and thus better accept the views and arguments. Switching places actually leads to and understanding of how the other one thinks by seeing how this person tackles a difficult question.

Another discussion floated along and that was the talk about icons and role models and the value of having role models that actually speaks for education. Even tho our (sort of) famous actor Dolph Lundgren, recently seen leading the swedish eurovision contest, actually completed a masters degree in chemical engineering before going full time into acting.

Above all i think that roleplaying actually contributes into building self-esteem in youngsters, even if you don't focus it on work related themes.

My last group was to help build a better picture of youth in Sweden, called Swedish lifestyle. I hope they got as complete a picture as tehy liked. It was good practice too because it's har dot put a lifestyle into words, especially in under an hour!.

On to the grand finale! The intercultural exchange night! this was fantastic all countries participating brought typical food from their country. All in all it was eight countries, and i constantly ate food going two and a half laps around europe. i half expected that that food wouldnät be enough but i was wrong. i got so stuffed i still have a bloated belly typing this!

Fantastic food, fantastic people and good sportsmanship when we introduced "Innebandy" aka Floorball. when i say good sportsmanship i mean that the contenders moved the goals tackled and generally did anything to produce a goal. Basically we were entertained by a very tight European Championship in Floorball.

As i was driving and always trying to follow the principle don't drink and drive, we managed to use some bottles of Bru that had been emptied to actually sneak me  some greek and italian wine home. i also recieved some handpicked oregano from the greeks, which will have great value to me, since i like to cook very much. I enjoyed all the food, and i thought i liked teh Thai way of preparing octopus but the greek way had a very fresh taste to it. I fell in love with it instantly.


It was of course very interresting to see how the people reacted to some of the swedish food and candy. Mixed reception i'd say! I don't think i can describe it all unless i skip this little details called sleeping. i'll add some more images just to show you what you missed by not being here.






Special note: This evening held a very prestigeous contest in knowledge and learning. the topic was knowledge about our county Värmland and city Karlstad and holding her price is the winner!









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