The first and most obvious obstacle that the participants had to overcome was language. However, this and many other aspects of diversity did not stop the group to communicate with each other. Diversity was the dominant theme of the week under many aspects: diversity of cultures, of backgrounds with and without escape experience, of a life with or without disability.
The week in Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance was a good opportunity to share the everyday life: the participants cooked together, met in the morning to discuss the topic of diversity and then worked together creatively: the group of Bosnians, French and Germans approached the broad topic through theatre and painting.
Teresa Boulle is the project manager of the initiative and is pleased about the committed participation: "The challenges were great - it wasn't so easy just to get the everyday life together... We had capable, well-trained group leaders with us and in the end it was even possible to have a spontaneous performance at the "Kulturufer" - a cultural festival there in the region!
During the interviews of the participants on the last day many drew a very positive conclusion. Two examples:
Belma (Serbia):
“First we did a “meet up” exercise to meet each other better. After that, Serge showed us what one clown should be doing, and then we tried to act like a clown. It was so funny because at the beginning we were so bad at it. But after some time we got better. We thought that a clown is just one mad man, but we found out it´s not true.
I feel really rich and awesome because I can make people happy through this.”
Ansa (from Pakistan, lives in Germany):
“ Our group is about writing your own life story and deciding that we should never judge a book by its cover. We´re going to make a book as big as a human being.
First of all, we introduced ourselves and talked about things we like. On our first workshop we tried to learn as much as we can about others.
I really like the workshop! It was a very nice idea. I like the fact that everyone worked together. It´s really nice to learn about other cultures, because we are all similar but also so different.
