I thought it could be nice...

Hey!! I thought it could be nice to remember that one month ago we were about to finish this wonderful project and say good bye to all the beautiful people who were part of the project of Business Pioneers in Costinesti, Romania.

Remembering these days, I selected some pictures that resume the emotions, activities and the good time we had during this Youth Exchange.

Thank you for sharing this experience with me, and also to the facilitators that worked hard to make this experience unforgettable.

#businesspioneers

#ErasmusPlus

#initiativesociale

by Sarah White

We discovered the magic of Erasmus + projects

Hi! We're a group of friends from Chișinău, studying in Romania. We discovered the magic of Erasmus+ projects during the last few months.

Between 17-27 February, we participated in the project named "Business Pioneers", held by Initiative Sociale at Costinești, Romania. We managed to meet a lot of awesome people from Greece, Italy, Turkey, Spain, Latvia, Romania, to make new and strong friendships, to work in teams, and last but not least, we managed to learn the steps we have to take in order to start a business. We lived some unique moments, which we'll remember for a long time!

The accomodation during the project was perfect, and we need to thank Tanase Robert, Adrian Oprică and Ioana Așka for their hard work, active implication and thorough organization.

After the project, we held a ZOOM session with people from our community, where we told them about our beautiful experience at Costinești, we showed them photos from the project and encouraged them to participate in Erasmus+ projects.

by Roman Lavric

Let's remind this amazing project one more time after a while

Hii. Let's remind this amazing project one more time after a while. "Business Pioneers" was a very valuable project which was carried out in 17 - 27 February 2022 in Costinesti, Romania. The main goal of the project was informing us about the business world although we learnt so much more than that, both socially and intellectually. We were group of young people who came from 6 different countries from different sides of Europe. We were all here for learning lots of thing and enjoying the event.

Firstly, we met in a common point in Bucharest and we moved to Costinesti all together. Our first activities are energizers, ice-breakers and meeting with each other. We talked about our expectations, fears. We turned back and looked our past expectations and fears as time goes if they came true. Most of our expectations came true about the project and our most fears were already just funny ones. As time progresses, we focused more on the project topic business life. Even though some of us were highly experienced and some of us were uninformed about this topic, all of us shared something in the activities. With the help of non-formal education, we easily became warmer to the topic and learnt so much information in very limited time. We prepared creative works such as short theatres, websites, logos, posters. Most importantly, we created an idea about our future fictitious bussiness plan.

Other than all the activites that we did in the project, we didn't forget to have lots of fun. In the cultural nights, we tasted all sorts of spesific flavors, musics, informations, games, dances. We travelled beautiful sights of Costanta. Our parties were so funny. And the food in the hotel were amazing and very diversified. The cleaning of the room and all accomodation was very good on our sweet hotel.

And we had our warm hearted facilitators Ioana Așka and Adrian Oprică. I thank them a lot for preparing this amazing project and enjoying with us. Also thank you Tanase Robert for causing this project to be real. Our sending organization Gaziantep Local Youth Group and our hosting organization Initiative Sociale has very special place for us for organizing this opportunity.

I had very warm friendships with all people in the group because of this project. I hope we will be able to meet in other beautiful projects like this in the future.

by Görkem Gemalmaz

#erasmusplus

#AIS

#initiativesociale

#businesspioneers

I thought it would be a great opportunity for all of us to look back and reminisce memories ❤

Between 17-27 February, I attended a project named Business Pioneers in Costinesti, Romania consisting of 6 different countries. I can easily say that I really enjoyed every single day of it, everybody was so friendly and motivated. There are a lot of people that I am glad that I met. As always, first days aimed us to get to know each other with games and energizers. As days progressed, we started to focus more on the project topic and stepped into the business life. Our more experienced friends explained us a few key info and gladly answered raising questions. We were also divided into 4 groups to share daily updates because as we all knew ''Sharing WAS -but ALWAYS WILL BE- caring' We had a free day in beautiful Constanta, we explored around and enjoyed the surprisingly warm weather near Black Sea coast. The last 3 days, we worked in our small groups focusing on our own businesses and at the end made presentations and finally, determining the winner

At every single night, we had crazy parties after intercultural nights. The tables were full of outstanding dishes and there were pretty informative presentations belonging each country. Our beloved facilitators Ioana Așka and Adrian Oprică were always there to introduce us new activities during the day, to make sure that we were involved in tasks and to enjoy with us during the night, for sure You guys literally were the best!!! And Tanase Robert was there to make sure we were doing okay and enjoying every minute of it. Big thanks for your interest and kind attitude, you always informed us good enough before and after the project and have always been so helpful.

Now, as you all might guess, we are at my definitely favorite part...: PARTIES! During the nights; the atmosphere, the music, the energy and of course the dances were AMAZING!! Even I can say that I danced enough out of it! All the dress codes, make ups- which were my favorites- and music lists were on fire and I am still feeling so lucky to be a part of them all. Who says the next can't be better than the previous one, remember?

It would be a shame not to mention how good accommodation was. The hotel staff was so kind and helpful, the dishes were always so delicious and various. Both cleaning and serving were amazing, huge thanks for their hospitability.

Lastly and of course, I'd like to send special thanks to Initiative Sociale for hosting us within this memorable project and to my sending organization Gaziantep Local Youth Group for giving me this opportunity. Everything was organized perfectly!

If you are here and read it all, I appreciate your patience...or should I say, curiosity? Just know that I love you guys all and I feel extremely lucky to be a part of this family. Hopefully see every single one of you in the nearest future. Take care and also take all those precious moments with you causeee: We are better together!

Warmest hugs and kisses,

#erasmusplus

#AIS

#initiativesociale

#businesspioneers

by Duru Özyapıcıel

The Black Sea in February is a blue expanse of icy water

The Black Sea in February is a blue expanse of icy water, constantly buffeted by a stiff wind that makes walking in the opposite direction difficult. The Romanian seaside village of Costinesti, built in the 1950s at the wish of the communist regime as a summer retreat for young people of the party, is now a cluster of holiday houses, hotels, discos ready for screaming crowds and even the wreck of a Greek ship full of oranges, which ran aground on its shores and has been the town's symbol ever since. The most artistic thing to be found here is a gigantic obelisk, clearly in the style of constructivism and probably made of concrete pipes and construction poles, which without any signs or meaning has grown like a mushroom out of the sand, becoming for us outsiders the easiest reference point to identify and to look at like a lighthouse in case we lose our bearings among the city's uniform streets.

In this setting, 36 people under the age of 30 found themselves for ten days, from 17 to 27 February 2022, coming from the four cardinal points of Europe for the Youth Exchange project entitled "Business Pioneer". Greeks, Spaniards, Latvians, Romanians, Turks and Italians, all together and led by the Romanian association Initiative Sociale and the two facilitators for the task: Adrian and Ioana. In the case of us Italians, ScambiEuropei was the partner that took care of the selection and sending the Italian team.

The aim was to create an environment of confrontation on the theme of business, based on non formal education methods, which, at least for us Italians, accustomed to lectures from primary school to university, is a completely new field. No more books, pens and pencils on the desk, the activities include work in ever-changing groups, tasks around the city to create team-building and discussions in a circle where everyone is asked to contribute something from their previous experience. All this was done in a protected environment, where there was no judgement or voting, just a desire to get involved.

The activities took place until late afternoon, then resumed after dinner with cultural evenings in which each nation was asked to tell aspects of its culture: from sendings NGO to dances and culinary tastings, including karaoke and quizzes. It was a way of opening up to new experiences and cultures, as well as a very important moment to get to know the other participants on a human level and create bonds.

After the first few days to get to know the group and the working method, the activity got underway: divided into groups, the participants were given the task of creating a “hypothetical” social activity from scratch, including a business plan, logo, promotional video, website and social channels, and then presenting it to the other groups on the last day, with a formal pitch as in large companies. The results were beyond all expectations as, working in heterogeneous groups, everyone was called upon to make their own contribution: those with an artistic background worked on the logo, those with an engineering background analysed the economic data and so on.

Ten enriching days, full of human exchange - so much needed after two years of pandemic - and sharing, even though tragic news arrived from neighbouring Ukraine, which shook everyone. The surprising thing, in the tragedy, was the response given by the group: trying to be more and more open to others, supporting those who had moments of despair for relatives or friends at war and trying, at least for the few days spent together, to create something beautiful, an idea of a peaceful future where several cultures coexist in a constructive way.

The Youth Exchange was all this, summed up with the key words of sharing, openness and creativity. A way to know the world through its components, a way to open your mind to new horizons; the key to remove the fear of the other, when you realise that in front of you there is a person who, like you, wants to be an active part of the world.

by Isabella Gavazzi

Maybe I'm a little late to this, but the post-Erasmus depression is not over yet!

Maybe I'm a little late to this, but the post-Erasmus depression is not over yet!

During these 10 incredible days, even though it was my second youth exchange, I really understood what it actually is. I understood that if we cooperate all together and all offer our skills and knowledge, we can create something really amazing, even if we don't know each other and we are so different in terms of religion, culture, background etc.

But besides that, I met some very interesting people that I hope to keep in touch with in the future and had unique experiences (been and learned more about Romania, touched the black sea, had a night walk at a beach at winter, shared 2 hours at a swimming pool with people from different countries and much much more).

A special thanks to our incredible facilitators Adrian Oprică and Ioana Așka that I really admire and wish them to keep the way they are. I hope to see you somewhere in the future! 

And keep participating to these projects!

by Marios Achilles

My turn to share my experience!

I really enjoyed these 10 days, first of all thanks to the super interesting and friendly people I met. The place was also ideal next to the sea, where we could walk and enjoy the view and the sound of the waves.

So regarding the project, I found the topic interesting and I actually learned something new, mainly about business planning and how business can contribute to social issues. I want to thank Ioana and Adrian because they were great mentors and friends to us. They both knew what they were talking about but most important they enjoyed the process and talking to us during the sessions.

And of course I want to thank each one of the participants for all the fun we had together during the parties, for the ideas we exchanged and for all the new things we tasted during the cultural nights from each of our countries.

I really want to meet all of you again and wish everyone to go on making such beautiful memories, like this one.

by Maria Vasileiou.

GrandTells

"The service we offer is to make the stories of the elderly accessible on different platforms.

Mission:

Storytelling the past stories of the elderly and young people in a sustainable digital format.

Vision:

Including the elderly in a process of digital transition by improving awareness of the stories of the past."

@Facebook: here

@Instagram: here

@Video advertisement: here

@Business plan: here

WE ARE THE SAME - WATStoys

"Everyone has their own story to tell. We have never lost the desire to learn, and even now we are still perfecting our strategy with each new challenge. Today, our mission is to help more people enjoy life a little more!

We are WATStoys and this is our story!

Our mission:

• We want to help all children with or without disabilities feel valuable.

• We focus on the durability of our materials.

"WE ARE THE SAME" - we make-use-recycle

Our vision:

• Increasing awareness about disabilities. We focus on a wide range of disabilities.

Our values:

• Our business is more than a job. Every time we take on a new project, we make sure that it aligns with our set of values so that we know we can deliver great results.”

@Facebook: here

@Instagram: here

@Video advertisement: here

@Website: here

@Business plan: here

Unchained Bakery

"It all started with ... a desire to give a second chance to the lives of former detainees, while we can share our passion for pastry with the citizens of Chisinau, Moldova.

Our company aims to give young detainees a second chance to become part of society again and to help them cope with past problems and their effects on their mental health, social and economic situation. And we make good bread.”

Facebook: here

Business plan: here

Muse I AM

"This is a great idea to let us all share experiences beyond any disability. We have seven main target groups, people with visual impairment, hearing, smell, tactile senses, taste or mental disorders and physical disabilities.

Muse I AM wants people with disabilities to have a chance to gain these experiences through high technology and neural development by combining all the senses.

Berlin is recognized as a world city of culture and creative industries. There are many cultural institutions, representing a diverse heritage, enjoying an international reputation. Many young people, cultural entrepreneurs and international artists continue to settle in the city. ”

Website: www.mtmartinmacom.wixsite.com/my-site

Business Plan: here

Metamorphosis Recruitment

"We are five young people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-seven from four different countries. Each of us comes from different fields: humanities, engineering and science.

Our strong point is that everyone in our team is essential, but no one is fundamental.

Our goal is to share our experience and skills to create a recruitment company for disadvantaged people.

We believe that everyone should have a chance, regardless of their past or lack of experience.

That's why our agency focuses specifically on young people in orphanages who have reached the age of 18, and we also provide opportunities for survivors of domestic violence, victims of human trafficking and people with disabilities (according to European law). "

Contact:

Website: here

Facebook: here

Business plan: here