Matyáš Elicer

I have first joined Project Comenius in Autumn of 2013. I have been picked because there were no activities prior to that and one of the goals of the first meeting were to create a website for our project. Our teachers thought that I would be fitting for the task, so they included me in our first group.

The project was very exciting for me. At first, that was mainly because I have neither visited any foreign countries before, nor I travelled by aeroplane. We only sent a group of four people (two teachers and two students) for the first meeting. We flew to Larnaca, Cyprus, in November. We were picked up at the airport and they took us to a hotel in Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus. In few days, participants from other countries have arrived as well, so we started working on the project.

The theme of Project Comenius is educating ourselves about modern social problems and trying to find solutions for them. I believe that is mainly to raise our awareness and make sure we grow up to be kind people who carry our society onwards, not break it apart from the inside. I think that this goal was met with success. I only participated in two meetings (one at Cyprus, the other one at home, in Czech Republic), but all of us were made familiar with results of other students' work results, as well. From those I can assume that we all got the wonderful chance to meet people from different countries and different cultures, being able to work together and learn new things not only about those problems, but also about each other, and ourselves.

While the part where we work on the project and perform various tasks clearly turned out to be beneficial, I think that the main strength of the project lied in the (most likely intended) side effects. The fact that we gathered information and researched the differences between us sure helped us, but it was the fact that we did all of those things together, as people who come from different distant places in the world (save for Slovakia, they were not very distant to us, Czechs) and yet are able to work together as people, which made us see that the differences between us are not obstacles, but rather are just cosmetic. 

The most enjoyable, and in my opinion also the most beneficial, part of the project was the passive part. It was very nice and exciting to meet people from different countries, find out how well we can (or can not) communicate with them and get to know them better. A lot of people from our school made a lot of new friends thanks to Comenius. It was really great that we could go sightseeing in other countries and socialize with our colleagues. Thanks to our work, we were brought together and given the opportunity to get to know each other in our normal lives, and in turn thanks to that, we were able to work together better.

I would say that the project has also extended our vision. We spend our lives in our homeland, immersed in our native (although more and more globalized) culture. This may lead some of us to think only in the scope of our country. Projects like this, however, help us see things outside of our home and get a clearer idea about the rest of the world and how very close it is to us.

To summarize, I would say that Project Comenius brought a great idea that soon turned into a great reality. It provided us with some great knowledge, experience and memories.

 

Matyáš Elicer