In the period from 29.07 to 02.08.2024 the all-girls Slovak team participated in the training of Empathy in the Portuguese town of Águeda. The theme of the training was empathy, but more narrowly focused on developing knowledge about the Holocaust. We also covered topics such as European rights and values, bullying, hate speech, fake news and equality between people.
Águeda is located 240km from Lisbon and 78km from Porto. It could be called one of the most colourful cities in Europe. While walking in the town, you walk under thousands of colourful umbrellas and at every turn you can find a new work of art that stands out for its colourfulness.
The main aim of the project was to broaden our awareness of the Holocaust and also to help us develop in the field of formal and non-formal education, where the Holocaust and its aftermath is the main point of discussion.
In addition to our Slovak team, participants from Spain, Portugal, Romania and Poland took part in the training. The Romanian and Polish teams also brought experts on the subject to Portugal, who shared their personal stories from their family history with us. By listening to such stories as well, we were able to better empathise with what people were going through at the time.
The whole week was packed with different activities such as the Human library (where we listened to life stories of specific people), different activities to understand European rights and values, as well as activities to become aware of our own privileges. We tackled different questions that students might ask us about these topics and finally each team had to prepare a workshop on one of the 4 main topics of the training. The Slovakian team presented a workshop on the Holocaust, where we first looked at basic information about the Holocaust and then moved on to various activities to engage the other participants in our workshop. The other teams also presented other topics in a very interactive way and we had discussions together.
This training gave us a lot of information that we would not have learned in school. Through direct discussion and group work, we gained knowledge that we will not easily forget. Last but not least, we met interesting and educated people from other countries who contributed a lot to the experience.