SUMA

LOCAL ACTIVITY WITH NGO SUMA

Date: 10.1.2024.

At the invitation of the Association for Sustainable Development SUMA, we held a two-hour workshop for their members as part of a trip to major Croatian cities, during which they learned about models of civic activism, the way the association functions and how they themselves can contribute to the development of their region by activating their own resources.

Our desire is to enable them to experience something new and different, and we presented our KA2 project NFE for DIS through the activity of building a spaghetti tower in mixed teams that included people with special needs (some team members were blindfolded).

This very challenging situation allowed them to gain their own insight into the importance of appropriate communication with disabled people so that they could become equal members of the team and by developing their skills contribute to the achievement of some common goal that the team has, in this case it was the task of building a tower. Although at first glance it seems that the task is competitive, this is actually about togetherness, teamwork, learning about inclusion, accepting one's own and others' limitations, modifying the ultimate goals of the entire team in which all members can participate.

During the evaluation, we focused on the importance of respecting diversity and creative ways of thinking about the possible inclusion of all members of a team so that ultimately all members feel satisfied.

The second part of the activity was related to emotions and food and how through the deprivation of one sense we allow the enhancement of others that change them and how pleasant such a process is for us. In this trust activity, one person had to describe the food before tasting it, which led to a series of unforeseen situations, nor. asking questions about possible allergies, which could even be dangerous in some other life situations.

During the discussion about the activities, the participants shared that they were glad to know the people who give them food because they trust them, while some of them clearly said that it is very difficult for them to notice that they do not have enough trust even though they know the people they were paired with that they has enabled new insights into their behavior patterns.

Experiential activities like these enable young people to develop their awareness of themselves, but also of the needs of others, which is extremely important because it often seems to us that we are becoming a society of individuals alienated from others, which is partly a possible result of the challenges that society has been dealing with in the last few years, and it is extremely important to work on the establishment of social ties between all members of the community.

In the end we presented our project and handed all of the participants stickers which they liked a lot.