Youth Empowerment, through Soft Skills Development

2024-05-12 The stories

Youth Empowerment, through Soft Skills Development

It's 4 PM and I'm standing at the bus station, waiting. When Croatia is mentioned, beaches and rocky coastlines come to mind, but all around there's nothing but rural homesteads. I'm in a small town called Gospić, and in front of me is a lost man with a large bag. We don't belong here, so I know for sure it's my Slovak co-participant, Slavo.

We are about to participate in a week-long training course full of knowledge and new experiences, organized by Outward Bound Croatia. After a short while, Lana greets us and drives us another 6 kilometers into the beautiful Croatian nature.

We spend the first night meeting the other participants from Greece and Spain, unaware that 8 days later we will be crying like babies when we say goodbye.

Then the first day of the training course began. Before we knew it, a group of strangers became a team, and ice-breaking activities quickly turned into challenges requiring cooperation and dialogue, where each of us played a key role. In some of them, people were carried through the air like Supermen, others required deep thinking and left us speechless or blindfolded. After each one, we brainstormed what had just happened and realized how much we were learning through our personal experiences. We spent most of the week outdoors, in the beautiful Croatian nature, and the absence of phone signal was irrelevant as the team thrived on communication. Ivana and Čedo from Outward Bound Croatia did an amazing job, teaching us a lot about soft skills and their use in communication, while also leaving us enough space for learning to be natural and self-directed.

Despite all our efforts, however, the training course ended, and we had to part ways for now. Yes, the project ended, but the friendships we made and the skills we learned… those will last for a long time… 🙂