Hi! I am Davit. One of participants in Romanian YE.I would be glad share with you my success story of
this project.
There have been 5 participant countries in the project: Turkey, Armenia, Romania, Estonia and
Lithuania. The aim of project was to make participants aware of socially relevant topics, to prevent
internet addiction, to identify advantages and disadvantages of internet and learn alternative ways of
spending our time productively. It has been done by non‐formal education methods such as
brainstorming, role‐playings, debates, interactive games, sport activities and so on.
You see we have had a great opportunity to interact with people from various cultural backgrounds.
This sounds really grandiose because it allowed us to maximize our undiscovered talents, to flounder
behaving intrinsically but understand at the same time this is great chance that embodies our dreams.
During project I understood that I had had great potential about which I could not even imagine. Then,
my English was incredibly improved which will empathically influence in my future plans. Besides,
although I was not spending that much time in internet before project it unwittingly thought me that
internet is good master but there are more important things than meaninglessly scrolling Facebook page
or wasting time in Instagram. I’m so happy returning home with lifetime experience and memories and
also I’m glad meeting teenagers like me who profoundly changed my view of life, my understanding of
different aspects of life. And, the most important for me, I’ve got unique psycho friendship who built
gold time of my life. I am so thanked for this marvelous experience that Romanian YE gave me.
I would like to start my evaluation letter with a simple “Thank You” for giving me this
great opportunity. This was my first ever Erasmus+ project and to be honest I was
really nervous and excited. But as soon as I got to Romania and met all the amazing
people there, I felt warm inside, I felt that those ten days were going to be the best
ones of my summer and one of the most memorable ones in my whole life.
I was so happy to meet people from 4 different countries, communicate with them,
work in group projects and share my ideas. This youth exchange helps me to
understand that I am able to communicate with all types of people, no matter where
they are from and what their cultural background or language is. The hardest part, to
tell the truth, was my fear of being in the same project with Turkish people. Don’t get
me wrong. This was my first time outside my country and the first time I met Turkish
people in real life. But all the activities were organized so well, that I didn’t even think
about my fears anymore. We were having fun together, laughing, dancing, and
interacting. I also like that the organizers helped us to get more knowledge about
Erasmus and its programs. Because as a youngster living in EU partner country, I
need to have all that information in order to have success in future projects. I hope
that this will be the beautiful beginning of me becoming a member of Erasmus+
family and that I’ll get another opportunity to participate in other projects.
Edgar Poghosyan
Armenia
Bună dimineaţa 🙂 I am Margarita from the land of Sun ARMENIA !
Participating in the competition, I got a fantastic award from the best youth NGO ”FUTURE IN
OUR HANDS”, which was an opportunity to take part in the youth exchange in Romania.
My project was about advantages and disadvantages of using internet that is why it was called
“TIME 2B OFFLINE”
It was my first and unforgettable Erasmus+ experience .During those 10 days we didn’t have
phones and internet. We only had 30 minutes to use them.
I thought it would be impossible without internet, but after 10 days, I understood that life without
internet is more real, natural, harmonic and full of love.
Youth exchange’s participant countries where Romania, Turkey, Lithuania and Estonia.
They were clever, kind and friendly people that is why the atmosphere was wonderful, positive
and pleasant.
I had an amazing opportunity to travel and discover other cultures, to see a new country, to gain
a lot of knowledge in the topics discussed during the project, to meet new people from other
nations and to have fun.
The exchange program was highly informative and full of interesting daily activities, productive
and excellent organized.
Thanks to all the organizers.
Margarita Manasyan
Success story
Melanya Khachatryan
As “Time 2B Offline” was my first Erasmus plus project, at the beginning I was feeling a bit strained and thought that I wouldn’t be able to spend a whole week with very limited access to internet or maybe I would have some problems with communicating with other people. But hopefully, unlike my expectations, everything was beyond good. Even though we were only to spend 30 minutes online, our agenda was set up in the way that I never got bored and those amazing 10 days flew so quickly that I didn’t even manage to miss my country. This project was a real challenge for me, because previously I spent more than 3-4 hours online just scrolling down in my social media accounts and cutting down that amount of time for about 6-7 times seemed almost impossible. It showed me that 30 minutes is totally enough for checking news, chatting with friends and all other stuff and spending more time online is actually a waste of time. And all the workshops, presentation were really helpful because that makes knowledge much more impressive and easier-to-understand.
Besides teaching about the reasonable use of the Internet, this project was a wonderful chance to interact with people from different countries and improve our communication and English language skills. In addition, it also gave a chance to communicate with people who have different way of thinking, different culture and traditions and different outlook. I got to know some amazing people, some amazing cultures that I will never forget. Also, with the help of this project I made life-long friends and had unforgettable memories.
I would like to thank everyone that made this wonderful project reality for me. If i had a chance, I would definitely participate in the program one more time with the same people in the same place because I have left a little piece of my heart in Romania and it will forever remain there.
I used to wonder why don’t I get fresh air even though I open so many windows?
Why do I feel alone sometimes when I have over 800 friends and why is my suitcase
still under my bed while I’m traveling the world? Well, the answer’s pretty self
explanatory! Because I was so used to doing everything ONLINE, constantly on my
phone ( 7-8 hours per day). “Time 2B Offline” was a light shed on the online-offline
battle I had. It was more like a truce to help me get through the addiction I had. It
may seem funny to call it addiction, but I seriously felt that way. Living 10 days with
limited access to my phone was pretty hard, challenging, but perfectly helpful! I got
to know a bunch of cool amazing people from 4 countries. I realised that we are all
different, yet we all have the same universal way of thinking, same heart, same soul,
same dreams! I discovered new cultures, tried new drinks, tasted new food, learnt
new words in other languages! Now I know how to say “I love you” in more than 10
languages and let me say I’m going to put that sentence on loop and tell it to my
REAL OFFLINE life! Because it’s beautiful!
All the activities organized within the framework of the project truly contributed to my
self-awareness, tolerance and knowledge about the pros and cons of online living.
The entire project helped me to feel present in the moment and to enjoy each and
every second of my life. It seems we got a lot of time here on this beautiful planet,
but nobody knows what future holds! “Time 2B Offline” helped me to realise that
there’s no need to spend our precious time scrolling down someone’s Social Media.
There’s no need to compare yourself to others and feel sorry for yourself. There’s no
need to ignore the people sitting right next to you while chatting with a stranger who
has a cool profile picture. No need to pick your phone up every 2 minutes. From lots
of things I learnt during the project I learnt the most important: whoever you are,
wherever you live, whatever your life conditions may be, get out there, explore,
interact, hug, breath and widen your world. The world is way better OFFLINE. And
it’s worth living!
Nellie Melkonyan
Armenia
I want to tell you a bit about my story before the project. I was constantly using my computer or phone to talk with my friends instead of just going out to see them. Then one day my sister yelled at me cause of me being online for too much time, so I tried to look for a way to stop being online for long time. Not many days passed and my sister told me that she found the perfect cure for me which is a Youth Exchange named “Time 2B Offline” so I agreed on trying it out immediately and without hesitating applied for it. I got really lucky to get accepted.
First reason I wanted to participate in a project was to get rid of the addiction I had towards internet/social media, second reason was for me to improve my English skills, because I really love that language even more than my country language.
So when we left for the project I couldn’t stop thinking that my English skills won’t be enough to communicate with other people, because I didn’t use that language to interact with people for a long time. Well I really got surprised that I started to talk in English from the first day I got to Bran, with a person who is now my close friend. I started to like the people in the project so I interacted with them even more, more and more then I realized that I have a lot of new and amazing friends both from my country and other country groups. I couldn’t stop enjoying the activities that were held by the organizers, they were really fun and teaching, because even though it was my first project in Erasmus+ I still got to know lots and lots of information about it and right now, after the project I feel like I had more than one or even two projects, so I’m really grateful to the organizers to teach us all sorts of important and interesting facts about Erasmus+ or any other topic. I really felt like I’m in a family not a group of people whom I just knew for few days. Also well they were gathering phones everyday and not letting us use it more than 30 minutes daily, but that was the reason of the project. When I learned about it I made a challenge for myself to not use my phone or even take it out of the bag where they stored all the phones until the project ends. Despite the fact that I used it once to call my parents to tell them about the challenge so they won’t get worried, I didn’t even see my phone all those 9-10 days! I’m saying that even for me, who was addicted to internet and social media it’s possible to lose that addiction and “Time 2B Offline” helped me A LOT!
Ok so now for conclusion and result I got from the project. After the project I don’t even think about using my computer for anything except things like writing a document like this one. Now I’m searching for another project to participate in, because I just cannot live like this anymore after having all the good time in “Time 2B Offline” project, so I have high hopes to find a new project which will be as fun/teaching as that! And the most important, I can’t stop talking in English, even with a person from Armenian group, we made a challenge to talk in English despite the fact that we are in Armenia, just because me and her both loved the project and loved talking English, also I can’t stop talking to the rest of the people from the project from different countries.
Last but not least, I want to thank everyone who organized this project, to those who participated in it, I didn’t enjoy myself this much for a long time, and I really hope to have a project similar to “Time 2B Offline” really much! Thank you!!
Maksim Hakobjanyan
Armenia
