Sara Ouaaziz is a PhD student at the Sorbonne in Paris she took part in a Transnational Exchange Project (TEP).
The project featured a number of Virtual Exchanges with a group of students from Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Spain, France and Italy ahead of a week-long mobility in Tangiers, Morocco. It was part of a joint initiative with the “Dialogue Interculturel, Réseaux et Mobilité en Méditerrané (DIRE-MED)”, promoting dialogue, intercultural exchanges, partnerships and professional collaboration among young people in Mediterranean countries.
Sara attended two Virtual Exchange sessions and talks enthusiastically about the effect these had, ahead of the mobility.
“I thought the Virtual Exchange sessions would be all about preparing our presentations for Tangiers, laughs Sara, “but I quickly realised that wasn’t the idea at all”.
“It was funny,” she continues, “I got to Tangiers first, and was standing in the reception of the hotel when a group of noisy Spaniards and Tunisians arrived. It was great as I recognised some of them from my Zoom sessions (Zoom is an app used for virtual meetings) and so we ran up and hugged each other as if we’d known each other forever. I ended up sharing a room with one of the Spanish girls. So, our Virtual Exchange sessions were a great way to prepare us for meeting each other physically. I introduced myself as ‘Sara from Zoom’, she laughs.
More importantly, Sara explains that the dialogue and the activities she did during the Virtual sessions were helpful in the preparation for Tangiers. “The topics we talked about, like the issue of identity, how we see ourselves and who we are, stereotyping and cultural misunderstanding – all these were topics that resurfaced throughout our week during our activities and round table discussions. With all the different nationalities, we began noticing things about each other that we hadn’t thought about, so the mobility was a continuation of our initial dialogue during our Virtual Exchange sessions.”
Sara observed too, that those who had taken part in the Virtual Exchange sessions were more curious and more open to dialogue compared with those who had not. “The others tended to stick to their own little groups and didn’t mix much, which was a shame really. I think Virtual Exchange sessions ought to be a pre-requisite for mobility projects.”
