I come from the beautiful capital Berlin and was a representative of the jugendBEIRAT (youth council) of the wannseeFORUM foundation at the Youth Action Week in Strasbourg at the Council of Europe. Together with young people from all member states of the Council of Europe, we discussed important topics such as human rights, youth participation and digitalisation. At the end of the week, in line with the 50th anniversary of the youth sector, the Council of Europe had 50 proposals for action on all 3 themes to revitalise democracy and youth participation.

I attended a workshop on the topic of "digitalisation". We addressed the issue of the extent to which society is aware of digital media and digital opportunities and that there is still a lot of room for improvement in this area, especially in Germany. We also talked about equal opportunities and which groups in society have access to digitalisation and which do not.

Besides the work in the workshops, a varied programme was offered by the Council of Europe. From cultural music evenings with a stage programme, artistic activities such as poetry slams, graffiti spraying, stamping and creative writing, to nice get-togethers in the Youth Centre and listening to ESC songs, to the big farewell dinner and the closing party, it was packed with everything.

I gained so much from this week: Through the exchange with members from other youth organisations, I was able to get good inspiration for my own organisation. Through the digitalisation workshop, I got many project ideas for the jugendBEIRAT, which we can hopefully implement in the future. But apart from a lot of new input regarding the understanding of democracy and youth participation, I especially take the interpersonal aspects back with me into my everyday life in Berlin! I met incredible people from all over Europe who gave me new perspectives on life and enabled me to think further than just the bubble I found myself in every day. And besides possible international cooperation organisations for the jugendBEIRAT, I have made friends for life.

If the whole world would communicate and cooperate like we young people did during the Youth Action Week, we would be on the best way to world peace.

It was a week I will never forget.

Updated on Tuesday, 17/02/2026

Seunnla is a final year Master’s Student, under the TRIBOS Erasmus Programme. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Metallurgical & Materials Engineering, and she was awarded the Erasmus Scholarship in 2020. Seunnla is now rounding up her program in Sweden, studying and researching at the Luleå University of Technology. She is fascinated by sustainable engineering and hopes to pursue a career in R&D, creating solutions to environmental and energy problems using sustainable technology.

Updated on Tuesday, 17/02/2026

Senta is a youth worker at Youth Center Celje. She encouraged, mentored and supported young volunteers to develop and carry out their solidarity projects. During the Covid-19 lockdown, the Youth Center Celje provided daycare and learning assistance for children of parents working in the front lines of the epidemic. She was organising and mentoring the young volunteers working with children, and provided them with support. For her work with volunteers, she was awarded a national volunteering prize as the best mentor to volunteers in 2021.
 

Updated on Tuesday, 17/02/2026

Hi there! My name is Elisa. I am a student at the University of Helsinki. I study cultural research as my major subject and art history and French as my minors. I have been travelling with my family ever since I was very young, and this is why I have always been interested in travel and different cultures. However, I also wanted to travel independently and get to know other international young people. My friend introduced me to the Facebook account "Go international Villa Elba", through which I learned about the opportunities offered by EU youth programmes.

I recently turned 24, but I have been taking part in Erasmus+ youth exchanges across Europe since I was 15. On my first trip I travelled to Turin in Italy. I participated in a youth exchange with around twenty young people from other European countries, such as Poland and Spain. A youth exchange is a bit like an international camp, with the difference that young people are involved in planning it.

I decided to get involved in international projects because I wanted to develop myself, get to know new cultures and improve my English. Later as an adult I have participated in six-month Erasmus + exchanges through my university in Turkey and later in France. I believe that my experiences abroad have been useful to me in terms of my studies, future career and personal development.

In Italy, the camp's themes were recycling and the environment. We discussed these topics in groups and completed various exercises and workshops related to them. I must admit that I was not very familiar with recycling at the time, and I learned a lot about the importance of recycling and its consequences for the environment on this camp. In addition to the exercises, leisure activities were organised for us, and we toured the city of Turin. We visited museums and got to know each other. I travelled with two other Finns of my own age, and I still keep in touch with them.

My next international youth exchange of one week called 'Tower of Babylon' took place two years later in Belgium. On this exchange, too, I went out with four other Finns whom I did not know before the trip. In this project I was the team leader, which meant that I had to take care of various practical matters.  We lived in a camp centre in Oudenaarde, a municipality in the province of East Flanders. I shared a room with three other female participants.

The camp centre offered different outdoor activities, such as climbing, an obstacle course and paddling. One day, we spent an hour on an adventure trail that had various obstacles, and at the end we were all covered in mud. I will always remember the fun we had that time.

As part of the camp programme, we also paddled together to an island and built a tower with timber we had brought with us. If you did not want to or could not participate in the building work, you could negotiate a different job for yourself. You should remember that you will not be forced to do anything when you go on a youth exchange. You can always find some other task to do if necessary. In this situation, for example, some people did not want to go paddling, and they were given cleaning tasks or asked to help organise the following activities.

Another significant memory related to that trip was the 'international evening', which is usually part of every youth exchange. The idea of this event is that you bring some traditional foods from your country to it and share your culture with the others. It was my job as a team leader to make sure that each member of our group brought the agreed share of the food, such as salted liquorice and squeaky cheese. Before we went food shopping, we were given a budget for buying supplies. We also cooked together, for example Italian gnocchi. The camp focused on taking everyone into consideration, so we had vegan food on our shared meals. This is when I learned that vegan food can also be tasty.

About a year later, I volunteered for one month with the European Solidarity Corps in Greece. We worked in a small village called Krioneri one hour's drive from Athens. I remember how nervous I was about this trip because I had never lived on my own for such a long time before. But I am very pleased that I decided to go.

During the day, we worked outdoors at renovating a historical path and house, gardening and organising events. We also received a daily allowance that we used for travel and food during our leisure time. We got lunch and dinner every day, and we lived in a club house. We arranged an international evening here, too, and I made a traditional Finnish root vegetable salad for it. I prepared a talk on Finnish culture and history and gave it to the other project members and villagers.

I remember how nervous I was at first about living with strangers in a new environment. This project pushed me outside my comfort zone at times, which I felt was very good for me. Such experiences as cultural shocks as well as new environments and adapting to them are very much part of international exchanges. I also believe it was living together that helped me get to know the others very well and make lifelong friendships.

Video presentation on the voluntary project:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gnAtChQmys

The destination of my most recent, week-long youth exchange was a small city called Laguepie in France. The theme was groups belonging to sexual and gender minorities. The youth exchange also had participants from non-EU countries, such as Belarus, Turkey and Ukraine. In the club room, we talked about our personal experiences of LGBT people's rights in our countries and considered solutions to the problems faced by minorities.

During this youth exchange, we lived in a camp centre where I shared a room with a Ukrainian and Belarusian girl. We also chatted about our views of the camp’s themes in our free time. I had some very interesting discussions and made new friends.

In our free time we hitched lifts to nearby villages. It felt safe because the village community was very small and everyone knew each other. On this camp, I learned a lot about the experiences of minorities in different countries and also started to questioned my own views of minority issues in Finland. I also had a chance to use my French, which I had studied at school earlier.

I strongly believe that if you go on an exchange, you should enjoy travelling and everything new cultures have to offer as much as possible in your free time. I find that EU projects allow you to broaden your world view and, as you encounter cultural differences, understand your own culture better. I warmly recommend Erasmus+ and European Solidarity Corps projects to anyone who would like to learn about different cultures, make new friends and advance their personal development.

Updated on Tuesday, 17/02/2026

I started working at an elderly care home after high school, and even though I appreciated my work very much I knew that this was temporary work, while I searched for a way to get to a French-speaking country. Because there was no doubt I was going to go to such a country. I had studied French for six years and I was certainly not going to let this language be forgotten.

                           I started browsing through old brochures, which I had collected throughout the years, and found one about an EU program for volunteers, called the European Solidarity Corps. It said that all the costs would be covered: travel to and from the project, insurance, accommodation, money for food and even some pocket money. The idea was to enable young people at the age of 18-25 to go abroad and do voluntary work, without having to pay anything themselves. To me, it appeared to be too good to be true, but I went to the program’s website and realized that it was actually true.

                           The site itself was easy to use. I created a profile where I presented myself, uploaded a CV in English and then I could start applying for different projects. For each project I had to write a short motivation about why I wanted to volunteer in their project specifically. Normally I didn’t get any answer, but one day I got an email with an invitation to a digital interview from a small project in western France. At the time I had been home from work for several days, due to a covid infection and this email really cheered me up. We decided on a date and time for the interview and really tired, with high fever, I went to this interview, which later led to a 12 months stay in France.

Updated on Tuesday, 17/02/2026

Virginia Torrecilla is a football player for the Atlético de Madrid Femenino. She is a midfielder and stands out for her quality with the ball at her feet and her tactical intelligence. She made her debut with the Spanish national team in 2013, participating in two European Championships and two World Cups. Virginia has become an example of self-improvement, having returned to the pitch on January 23, 2022 in the final of the Spanish Super Cup against Fútbol Club Barcelona. She has received numerous national and international distinctions and awards that certify her as a reference for all.

Updated on Tuesday, 17/02/2026

Giuseppina comes from Italy but is currently living in Brussels, where she works for the Organising Bureau of European School Student Unions (OBESSU), an organisation working to empower school students and defend students’ rights all over Europe. Giuseppina started being a school activist in her hometown when she was 14 and in 2009, through her first Erasmus youth exchange, got to learn about the power of European solidarity and Civil society thanks to the incredible women activists that she met and exchanged with.  

Updated on Tuesday, 17/02/2026

I have always liked to be considered an explorer, but not long ago I realised that I would like to explore other countries, not only Romania, so I decided to go with the Erasmus+ programme to Turkey, for a year.

Little did I know at the time that this experience would transform me in every way, from visiting different cities in Turkey (Antalya, Cappadocia, Ankara, Edirne) to spending nights with the families of my native friends, where I discovered their customs and traditions.

Excitement, joy, many surprises - this is how the university year started for me in Istanbul. The whole experience really transformed me, gave me the opportunity to grow and most importantly, helped me to see society in a totally different way, as I had the opportunity to interact with young people from different cultures, from different countries, young people like you and me, who set off on their adventure called Erasmus+.

The Erasmus+ journey gave me the opportunity to make new friends in an international environment, which is why this is an experience I will always remember fondly. I learned to cherish every moment, even more so towards the end of each semester, when I had to say goodbye to many of my Erasmus+ colleagues and friends.

One of the biggest challenges, however, was adapting to the national language, as the vast majority of people in Turkey does not speak English, so I took a Turkish language course. This made my friends and the people I came into contact with on a daily basis really happy, some of them even insisting on teaching me new words.

Because the whole experience changed me radically, I decided to go during my Master's studies again with the Erasmus+ programme. This time I chose Oslo, Norway as my destination. This study mobility has contributed to a better understanding of different teaching methods, improved my range of knowledge, brought me new friends, but most importantly, it has helped me to grow, both professionally and personally.

My whole Erasmus+ experience has been something like a dream, and if I had to define it, I would say it has been truly MAGICAL. I loved it so much that I will be applying a third time to go on a study abroad mobility during my PhD studies.

Once Erasmus, always Erasmus!

Updated on Tuesday, 17/02/2026

In early 2018, I took part in a European Voluntary Service period in Brussels, Belgium, with support from Alliansi Youth Exchanges.  This programme has since been renamed the European Solidarity Corps. For seven months, I worked for the disability organisation European Network on Independent Living (ENIL), examining how the EU's principle of free movement is realised for people with disabilities.

While I was already 28 when I volunteered and I even had experience of living abroad through my university studies, volunteering in a foreign culture was still in many ways a unique experience that you cannot fully compare to anything else.

My interest in international volunteering had already been sparked some ten years earlier after a friend of mine came to Finland as an EVS volunteer. I selected ENIL as my target organisation not only because the job description was interesting but also because no other organisation had at that time expressed its ability to accept volunteers with disabilities. I was also nervous because I had hit the same brick wall so many times when looking for a place.

Once I got there, I found myself firmly outside my comfort zone: Brussels as a city is anything but accessible. It took me a long time to learn to live a life I was happy with. Despite all the practical difficulties, volunteering in Brussels taught me a lot about not only how EU decision-making works but also myself and my strengths. I often had to abandon my preconceptions, both the good and bad.

Even if everything does not go as you might have hoped in advance, you are also personally responsible for having a successful volunteering period. Although it is often a unique opportunity, you should not expect that everything will be handed to you on a plate. In general, to immerse yourself in something new, you need to give up the old and familiar, at least temporarily.  You must tolerate uncertainty and also be prepared for the fact that sometimes things go very wrong, despite the best efforts of all parties. You can get over this, too, as long as you learn from it and move on. Support is available in problem situations, but you must also grasp it.

Personally, I got a lot out of volunteering in a foreign country. Soon after returning to Finland I joined the EuroPeers network, in which people who have participated in various Erasmus + programmes or the European Solidarity Corps share their experiences with young people interested in these opportunities. I also served for a year in the network's international steering group and gained valuable experience of how a large international network operates in practice, not to mention making new friends. Ever since that time I have wanted to promote young people’s internationalisation and the idea that everyone who wishes to do so should have access to international experience, regardless of such factors as their economic background or disability.

Although many things happened while I was out there and it was not all fun and games, I gained plenty of unique life experience and skills for the future, both in terms of life in general and my career. If you have the right attitude and you are prepared to make your own luck, the experience will be unforgettable and at best shape your ideas of the world, as it did in my case.

 It is natural to be nervous about something new and even scared. However, you should remember that if you let the fear take over and never dare do anything different, you will not achieve much in your life. Not even things that you might have enjoyed if you only had believed in your abilities and trusted life to carry you.

Updated on Tuesday, 17/02/2026

I am a student of a Bachelor’s in Computer Science program at the University of Luxembourg. Originally Ukrainian, I moved to Luxembourg with my parents when I was 15 and that is when I had my first chance to explore the international European community. After finishing high-school, I decided to go to the local University but was also curious to explore life in other countries. That is why I was highly excited that an exchange semester was a part of my University’s curriculum.

I chose to go to the Sorbonne University for my mobility. The academic program of my host University was not the main factor motivating my choice, however. I was interested to explore French culture outside of stereotypes, deepen my language skills and understand the mentality of my peers in France. But most importantly, I wanted to immerse myself in the lifestyle of Paris. An Erasmus exchange semester is a great opportunity to challenge yourself in order to see what life has to offer outside of the country or even the city you live in and rethink your values. In my point of view, it is difficult to just know what you want - you have to try it!

My own Erasmus experience was noticeably shifted since the Russian attack on my native country, Ukraine. Since then, I focused on spending time with my fellow Ukrainians by volunteering, going to protests and simply coming together to support each other and unite around our culture. During these four months, I was able to explore a powerful Ukrainian community in the very heart of Europe, which has become the centrepiece of my experience. By the end of my Erasmus, I have appreciated Luxembourg in new ways, but also discovered a life full of wonderful people, energy and purpose in Paris, considering it as a destination for long-term living.

Updated on Tuesday, 17/02/2026