Seven days in the beautiful sunny city on seven hills. Portugal’s finest, the city of Lisbon.
From 7th to 15th of May 2022, Ivana, Mihaela and Gjorgji participated in an Erasmus+ training course in Lisbon together with young participants from Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Croatia, France, Spain and Portugal. The primary task of the training “Draw for Your Rights” was to bring together young people from several EU and non-EU countries. The aim of the project was to develop the use of drawing as an educational tool within youth work and to promote Human Rights Education (HRE) through comics and illustration structured on communication principles.
In this project, as well as every other, the first day is reserved for getting to know each other. Since all of the 24 participants are coming from a different area, culture, background, etc. the process of getting to know each other was extremely fun. We played a couple of “get to know” games and we were drawing portraits of each other. The quality of that piece of art was incredibly horrible, but we had our fun.
Project activities were very intense but we were having so much fun. In the mornings and afternoons we were holding sessions about human rights education and how we as individuals can help and preserve the values of the basic human rights in modern societies. In the evenings we had drawing sessions where we were learning how to present or send ideas and messages through drawing, especially through drawing comics.
On the “day off” the whole group went out to explore the city center and we ended up in the famous Castle of Sao Jorge where we were doing urban sketching. Here a lot of the participants found out their drawing talents and we witnessed some real masterpieces from the participants who are already successful artists.
Even though we were all so much into the study of human rights, we didn’t miss the opportunities to hang out together in our free time. Everyone clicked with each other instantly, and we became like a family for those 7 days. Studying about HR conventions during the day, dancing our national dances during the night. Debating on the future of human rights at noon, having tattoo and makeup sessions at midnight. Drawing comics with donkeys during the activities, hiking to find our donkey in the hills of Lisbon in the morning.
Even though all 7 days it was extremely hot and sunny in Lisbon, on the departure day there was massive torrential rain and we joked that even the sky was crying because this project came to the end.
