Kalina Georgieva Dimitrova’s impression on BRAVE Training Course in Bonn, Germany from July 19 to July 27, 2023
Kalina from Bulgaria was one of the participants in the “Breaking Gender Barriers through Youth Work- Training Course” project in Bonn, Germany. Below you can read our short Q&A with Kalina who expresses her ideas and shares her experience with us.
- When you think about your week in Germany, what comes to mind first?
Participating in the Brave I Training Course was a truly enriching experience and thinking back about the week I spent in Germany, the remarkably interesting people that I shared it with always come to my mind first. I was able to gain so much knowledge from others’ personal experience and I’m forever grateful that I was given that opportunity. Our trainers’ work made a huge difference, addressing the essential and sometimes rather sensitive topics, they prompted the discussions and created these intriguing games,
which led to so much perception. They were able to impact the whole group immensely.
- What is something interesting you learned in the BRAVE I Training Course?
What I learned through our discussions of gender biases and gender roles was the lack of job opportunities for women in some countries and the conservative and discriminatory views of people regarding women’s choices in life regarding their profession and establishing a family. I strongly believe that open discussions and education are the key in solving this type of problem. The Course gave us a lot of knowledge regarding the tools and methods of changing this global issue.
- What specific skills or ideas did you take home from the Training Course?
How vital it is to make progress in harmonizing the EU law regarding LGBTQ rights is a sense that I got all through the Course. It’s unbearable for me to contemplate that not far from my country there are others in which being part of the LGBT community equals a death sentence. By itself, the Training Course has broadened my knowledge about the different traditions and cultural expectations of diverse societies regarding the binary roles of both sexes. We shared plenty of websites and Instagram pages, which aim to educate, assist, and raise awareness about that and the other issues that we analyzed together. Regarding spreading awareness of the difference between sex and gender a great tool we got acquainted with was the Gender Bread person, which was a fun way of showing clearly the gender identity, gender expression, the assigned sex, and finally the individual attraction people can have.
- Do you think the Training Course will have an impact on your future activities/work in general?
Given that I’m aiming to work in the law field in my home country, I’m certain that everything I learned about the subject will have a great impact on my future work and my career. One of the main topics which we widely discussed during the Training Course was gender-related discrimination and violence and the Training Course has inspired me to work against them henceforward.
- After the Training Course, what is something that you will remember from the week regarding content and general activities?
A lot of thought and creativity was put in all of the activities we had and we, the attendees, were all engaged with them in different groups and sometimes as individuals. Throughout that, we had a lot of discussions and time to reflect on all these hard topics which somehow everybody was able to relate to. What I will always remember is how much these at first glance easy activities had hidden so much depth and were so thought-provoking by the end. The Training Course was definitely worth attending.
The training was organized by Life Learning Development e.V. (Germany) under the Erasmus+ programme of the EU.