From 30th March to 7th April 2023, we have taken part in the training course Development of leadership skills for youth workers which took place in Pervolia, Cyprus, gathering together 28 participants from seven countries (Cyprus, Greece, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Czechia, Poland and Lithuania) and giving us the opportunity to evaluate and strengthen our leadership practices through a series of workshops and activities in multinational teams that focused on discovering and contemplating our approaches towards group organization and communication.
During those seven days we were discussing the importance of leadership and its different styles (authoritarian, democratic and laissez-faire), meanwhile highlighting the crucial role that communication plays in the process of creating a functional and productive team and the necessity of acknowledging and involving everyone, especially people who come from a disadvantaged background, in the decision-making process of that community. As an illustration of the importance of a democratic leadership we took part in a number of games that made as rethink our approaches towards communication within a given group and as we faced a variety of obstacles, we were made conscious of the different types of communication (verbal, visual and written) and how their combination leads to a more effective exchange of ideas. Furthermore, we took part in a role-play theatre where we had the chance to demonstrate our ability to take the leadership in our hands and provide a positive social change through intervening and changing the course of the plot which discriminated LGBT and disabled people.
Besides, we had two daytrips to Larnaca and Nicosia which allowed us to get more acquainted with the Cypriot culture by visiting historical monuments such as the Kamares Aqueduct, the medieval Larnaca Castle and The Cyprus Museum in Nicosia. Additionally, we had two intercultural nights where all of the national team had a chance to present their country’s culture and an NGO fair where they had the opportunity to inform the others about the goals of their organizations. At the end of the project, all of the participants together created a manual for youth leaders as an outcome of the things we learned through the intercultural and interpersonal exchange on this project.
