Melissa Končar: ADVENTURE – Social Media 4 Social Inclusion in Vienna

Dates of event: 21-28 October 2018

Place: Vienna, Austria

My Austrian adventure started on the 21st of October 2018. When I have arrived in Vienna, the host organization Popedu had a wonderful welcome and the whole organization team was great. They have accepted me perfectly. We had a very interesting program and very useful.

The name of the project was “Social Media 4 Social Inclusion” and we had various workshops and activities for 8 days. Some activities we were doing during the Erasmus week were International Chef, the presentation about Croatia, exploring Vienna and visiting the Hotel Magdas– hotel in Vienna managed and run by refugees.

The whole project group in hotel Magdas

Also, I had the opportunity to teach other participants about braille and to make the video with my team. The participants accepted me well.  The project was interesting and instructive, I have met new people and made new friendships. This is for me a beautiful and wonderful experience with a lot of young people in one place (teams of 3 participants from 10 different countries).

Eyes Wide Open

Still, I would like to share some tips and thoughts…A person with disabilities when is deciding to go to any kind of exchange, at any time and country, must be enormously brave and trustworthy that she or he can do it, although she/he has this disability.  The exchange is a great thing for people with disabilities because we can test our possibilities and difficulties.  When I have applied for the exchange my first fear was whether they would accept a person with a disability. The additional fear was how every one of the participants would accept the blind person. I have to admit they have accepted me greatly and I was not even hoping that it would be so well.

Secondly, I was really lucky because Association Strive! managed to find volunteer assistant for me. Her name is Antonia Perić and she was helping me during the whole training. She was letting me know what is in front of me, where I can find some obstacles, and in the meanwhile, she was portraying me how everything looks.  This is not an easy task at all, but my assistant has succeeded in making things beautiful.

I want to thank the whole organization (Strive!) and the one in Austria (Popedu) for opening the opportunity for me to go and experience this unique exchange.

Author: Melissa Končar

Participants: Igor Barać, Antonia Perić, Melissa Končar

And that is how we all together included Melissa to her first exchange ever.

Thank you Alfa Abona for sharing our call.

 

Connected article:

Melissa K.- slijepa djevojka na razmjeni mladih u Beču

2 thoughts on “Melissa Končar: ADVENTURE – Social Media 4 Social Inclusion in Vienna

  1. Can’t lebanon participate, i am with an organization that advocate for equal rights for LGBT and social inclusion in the lebanese and the region and taking best practices from european countries and would like to participate

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