The first Erasmus+ project I ever attended was in Bursa, Turkey. I was twenty years old, had never organised anything larger than a classroom event, and was put in charge of a youth exchange called Dialog Among Colors. I had a folder of logistics, a list of participants from four countries, and absolutely no idea that the next ten days would quietly rearrange something fundamental in how I see other human beings.
That was 2016. Since then I have participated in, facilitated or led more than twenty projects — in Estonia, Norway, Portugal, France, Finland and across Turkey. Training courses, youth exchanges, seminars on digital transformation, storytelling, educational games, policy development, discrimination, civic engagement. Each one had a topic. Each one had objectives, outcomes, evaluation sheets. But every single one taught me the same thing, hiding under all the official language: people, when given the right conditions, are extraordinary.
"Every project had a theme. But the real curriculum was always the same: learning to be genuinely curious about someone whose life looks nothing like yours."
The Projects That Changed Me Most
I won't list all twenty. But there are a handful that left marks I still carry — in the way I run a classroom, plan a meeting, disagree with someone, or simply sit across from a stranger and decide to stay curious rather than stay comfortable.
We were given a simple task: make a short film about something that matters to you. I paired with a participant from Georgia who barely spoke English. We communicated in fragments, gestures, shared phone screens, laughter. The film we made was three minutes long and about her grandmother's hands. I have never felt more fluent in my life — and I hadn't spoken a single sentence clearly. Estonia taught me that communication is not about grammar. It is about the decision to keep trying.
This project was the hardest I have ever attended. We spent ten days discussing discrimination — systemic, personal, historical, present. Participants came from countries where the conversation carried real weight and real risk. I came in thinking I understood privilege. I left understanding that understanding is a process, not a destination. Oslo gave me the uncomfortable gift of being genuinely challenged by people I admired — and learning that being challenged by someone who respects you is one of the finest things that can happen to your thinking.
I was a volunteer for the summer, working with a civic organisation in Porto. The city itself was a lesson — warm, layered, quietly proud. But what I remember most is a colleague named Mariana who had spent twelve years working in the same community with the same patience, the same warmth, every single day. She didn't burn out because she didn't perform care. She actually felt it. Porto taught me the difference between sustainable generosity and the kind that exhausts itself.
Four years into teaching, I came to Strasbourg to think about the future of education. The discussions were sharp, the participants opinionated, the city magnificent at dusk. But what stayed with me was a conversation over dinner with a facilitator from Romania who said: "The danger of digital tools is not that they replace teachers. It is that they give anxious teachers something to hide behind." I haven't stopped thinking about that sentence since.
What I Actually Learned — About People
After enough projects, you start to notice patterns — not in the topics, but in the humans. Certain things turn out to be true regardless of nationality, background or language. These are the ones I keep coming back to.
I have watched quiet people become facilitators, introverts become storytellers, people who said "I don't really have opinions" argue passionately for hours. Something about being in a new place — knowing nobody's prior version of you — gives people permission to try on a bigger self. Travel doesn't reveal who you are. It shows you who you could be.
Lost luggage, a broken translation app, an activity that goes completely sideways — every difficult moment in a project became a story within hours, a bond within days. I have never managed to build the same closeness with people through comfort alone. There is something about surviving something together, even something small, that skips weeks of small talk.
The projects on discrimination and policy showed me this most clearly. Whenever a facilitator pushed too hard for a specific conclusion, the room closed. Whenever someone asked a question and then genuinely waited — really waited, pen down, eyes up — the room opened in ways I didn't expect. Listening is not a passive skill. It is the most active thing you can do in a room full of people who have something real to say.
More lasting decisions, alliances and friendships were made over meals than in any formal session. Not because the sessions were unimportant — but because people relax when food is in front of them. They say the real thing. The best facilitation I have ever witnessed happened at a dinner table in İzmir between two participants who disagreed about everything and were passing bread to each other anyway.
This phrase gets used so often it has lost its edges. But I have watched a twenty-two-year-old from Georgia hold a room of forty people with a three-minute film. I have seen a first-year university student from Ankara write a youth policy recommendation that a government body later referenced. Erasmus+ projects work because they take young people seriously before the world is fully ready to. That early trust produces real things.
After twenty projects and more than a dozen nationalities around tables I have sat at, I have never met a person who did not want to be respected, to feel useful, to make someone laugh, to understand and to be understood. The expressions are different — wildly, beautifully different. The needs underneath are remarkably shared. That discovery does not make the differences less interesting. It makes them safer to explore.
"An Erasmus+ project is a temporary community. But the way people behave inside a temporary community — generously, bravely, openly — tells you everything about what they are capable of inside a permanent one."
What I Carry Forward
I am a better teacher because of these projects. Not because I learned new techniques from training courses — though I did. But because I spent years watching people from every background step into unfamiliar rooms and choose curiosity over fear. That is the model I try to bring into every classroom: a temporary community where stepping out of your known self is not just allowed, but gently expected.
I am also a better colleague, a better listener, and — I hope — a better citizen, because Erasmus+ introduced me to people I would never otherwise have met, and made space for us to be honest with each other in ways that daily life rarely allows.
If you are a young person reading this and wondering whether to apply for your first project — the question you should be asking is not "Am I ready?" The question is: "Am I willing to be surprised by other people?" If the answer is yes, you are more than ready. The rest will come.
