Social P2E

The Social Project to Enterprise (Social P2E) Youth Exchange was carried out under the Erasmus+ initiative between 22nd – 30th January 2016, in Watford, Hertfordshire, UK. The hosting organization TheDojo.Org.UK prepared an 8-day-long intensive programme for 11 international participants coming from cross-continental European partners – the Czech Republic (GEMS), Greece (Interalia Project) and England (TheDojo.Org.UK) to instil life into the Social P2E notion. The project aimed at promotion of the principles and philosophy of Martial Arts (MA) as a metaphor and teaching tool for personal skills development.

From Day 1 we jumped right into the full-packed intensive schedule: Participation in the Education for All conference in London, hosted by the British Teachers Union in a support of Steve Sinnott foundation efforts; we excitedly took part in 3 hosted workshops – Education for All, Volunteering, Storytelling. Various London and Watford based entrepreneurs came to give a talk on their entrepreneurial endeavours and share with us the real-life-proved idea of the Social Enterprise (Duro from 20/20 Change, Chris form Link4Growth – to mention few). Everyday workshops and trainings focused on personal growth enabled us to get to know each other better, hear out personal stories and experience, get feedback on prompted issues and most of all take in the inspiration to learn and develop new skills. Various sport activities took place throughout the whole programme with the aim not only to pick up the movement technique of Marital Arts (Karate, Kickbox, Tai Chi) but primarily to demonstrate and get our hold of mental agility and insightfulness that suits the personal growth just as well.

The ultimate goal of our exchange was to bring a Social Action to life – by setting up and carrying out a micro-level social project for which we decided to make handmade soap. All proceeds from the sale were equally divided between two chosen charities which we had a chance to get familiar with during our stay – Steve Sinnott foundation promoting Education for All and DRUMS charity helping people after stroke.

The programme was designed not only to help participants develop their personal skills set but essentially we were led to greater cooperation, understanding of the needs of our surroundings and communities that need to be addressed. Every single one of the participants left enriched, inspired and motivated to make his own action count. This makes me believe that the main aims of the exchange were accomplished making it a memory hard to forget for many of us.

On behalf of Czech team Marie Kolářová

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