At the beginning of June a group of us met up for an Erasmus+ training course on resilience – people from Macedonia, Serbia, Türkiye, Slovenia, Iceland, Romania and Italy. We spent our days doing a mix of art, movement, walks in nature and honestly just talking a lot, trying to figure out what “resilience” even means when you actually sit with it instead of just throwing the word around.

Seven countries, a lot of different backgrounds, but somehow we all ended up circling around the same questions. That’s kind of the point of these training courses I think – less sitting in a room being lectured at, more doing stuff together and then talking about what came up.

The first day or two were mostly exercises to get us to open up, both to ourselves and to each other. At one point we drew trees – roots, trunk, branches, the storms that hit us – as a way of mapping out our own resilience. There were also quiet walks in pairs where we picked up random bits of nature along the way, which made no sense at the time but turned out to matter later. At some point everyone sat alone and thought back through their own life story and turned it into art, which honestly hit harder than expected for some of us. We also did this trust exercise in pairs, guiding each other around with just our hands, then switched partners to talk about how it felt so the conversation wasn’t biased by the person we’d just done it with. That day ended with everyone making a collage about who they are and who they want to become.

Andrej, one of the participants from Romania put it well afterward: “It was a good and creative day. We learned a lot about ourselves, got a little closer to one another, and mostly created things with our hands… until we see each other again!”

There was also a full day of somatic body therapy, which some of us had never done before. It went in stages – first just connecting with yourself, then with a partner, then the whole group working together and supporting each other physically. Different vibe completely from the drawing/talking stuff earlier, but somehow it circled back to the same themes.

By the last couple of days things started feeling different, in a good-but-sad way. We had a session on Youthpass and sorting out paperwork for reimbursements (not exactly the most exciting part but necessary), then a closing circle where whoever wanted to could step forward, put on this birthday hat, and just get compliments from everyone before passing it to the next person. After that – Indian food for lunch, a walk to a waterfall that was freezing but worth it, and then one last intercultural night with a barbecue and karaoke that went way past midnight. Saying bye at the end didn’t really feel final, more like a “see you soon.”

Not sure there’s one neat lesson to take from all this, but I think what stuck with most of us is that we actually felt resilience during those days instead of just talking about the concept. And beyond whatever each of us personally got out of it, we walked away with real connections across seven countries – which, at the end of the day, is what these Erasmus+ training courses are actually trying to do.

Andrej Gligorov

Andrej took part in a training course “Let’s get resilient!” in Topolovec, Slovenia, organized by MC Dravinjske Doline.