It is well said that living our life, is the same as writing a book. Writing our own book is something that makes our life significant and different from the others. Making each chapter more interesting and lovable, we bring value to every single page we write. Undoubtedly, travelling makes one book even more valuable. Those who do not travel, write barely one chapter. But what happens to the millions of people who are forced to travel, and leave their homeland because their life is being insecure, threatened and risky? What’s being written in their book of life?

Having the privilege to participate in the training course “Sailvan” which took part in the beautiful and sunny Antalya, I wrote this short essay for the ones who are writing their books in deep suffering.The ones that are forced to move for a better tomorrow – the refugees.

Having its own unique name “Sailvan”, the Training Course turned out to be more exciting and interesting than we all expected. 7 Countries – Germany, Portugal, Romania, Greece, Turkey, Netherlands and Macedonia took part in this experience. Being accommodated in 3 camps, the Training Course was a real once-in-a-lifetime-adventure. We started the training sessions while floating through the coasts of Antalya. As exciting as it seems, the first place we got to was the actual home of Saint Nicholas of Myra – Demre. Starting the sessions, we got to know little bit more about the Erasmus+ opportunities, about Youth Exchanges, Training Courses and EVS projects. Than we discussed little bit more about the Youth Pass certificate which is the document every participant receives at the end their project. Moving forward, we started getting into the topic of the training course. The first thing we started discussing was the Human Rights. We were supposed to get more familiar with the universal declaration of human rights, and represent situations were those rights are being well misunderstood, rejected or not even implied to everyday life. Reading and worshiping all the articles from the universal declaration of human rights, we were supposed to think of a theatre play, where we actually represented situation of human rights which are not being implied to the everyday life. Moving forward, we started discussing about another really interesting and popular topic nowadays, and that is migration. Through the end of the Training Course, we had one more visit to an ancient city – The Lycian ancient city. Walking through the ruins of the majestic city, for a second we all felt like natives. Another interesting point of the adventure, were the intercultural nights, where each country represented their own tradition, culture and food. As usually, we got the chance to share our traditional food – Ajvar, and the drink – Rakija. To conclude, the Training course was an amazing once in a lifetime experience. Learning and dealing with the problems of the refugees, we got to know little bit more about the world situation nowadays. It might sound pretty modest, but its of a big importance when it comes down to realizing about its awareness.

Anastas Kitanovski

Photo: Ovidiu Oniciuc