Bulgarian Group about "Your New Mission"
Interview of Veronika Boycheva from Bulgaria after the Training Course "Your New Mission" in Torremolinos.
Can you give us your opinion about the project “Your New Mission”?
First of all, i would like to say that I evaluate my overall experience with the project for
highest score, and the project was delivered in amazing quality.
I am definitely recommending this project to any of my friends or relatives, if they are
interested in a positive, useful and international training and experience.
Our trainer did an amazing job not only for training us, but also for making us
collaborate and practically discuss about complex and sensitive topics such us EU
governmental institutions or refugee crisis, in a cool and friendly atmosphere. Overall quality of all speakers was good. I admire ethical and positive attitude from their side for each participants. Information what was presented was beneficial for me, I gained a lot of the oretical and practical experience on this topic. Event's agenda was well planned there was enough learning, collaboration. Catering and hotel was good. Also, I would like to mention that quality of networking of participants and organisers was on
a very high level.
What do you understand for “European Identity”?
Previously, I didn't know much about European Identity. For me, personally, European Identity could be defined as a form of collective identity that, as Fligstein (2012) puts it, “refers to the idea that a group of people accept a fundamental and consequential similarity that causes them to feel solidarity amongst themselves”. European Identity is based on European values such as dignity, freedom, equality, solidarity, citizen rights and justice. Most important for me is freedom and protection.
Also, I would like to add such part of justice value as presumption of innocence and right of defense. This is crucially important to me when I am thinking about European identity.
What should be the EU priorities in the field of youth and in what the EU should
improve ?
Due to our training course we went trough a lot of initiatives what EU does for youth, and I can not add more. I noted, that focus for next years is on digital life long learning and development. I would advice, not to forget offline activities, because if we are interested on networking and we definitely are, people become closer offline.
The oretical knowledge of course we can gain via online, but offline is connecting people. However, I would also advice to work much more on spreading this information. I didn't know more that 95 % of what I learned I would advice to use influencers to promote a lot of activities in social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, Tik-tok, etc.
What will you do at local level to promote EU iniciatives and explain to other young people what is the EU ?
I would advice quite similar things - spread the information between youth through schools, through parents, through team mates and influencers, and not to forget about life offline. Also, i would advice to promote in countries such positions as projects managers, who could advice how to use funds for raising such experience. We have so many opportunities, and it is important to use them as much as possible.