Financial Literacy Camp – Team Building
Balatonföldvár, July 10-19, 2017
“I am proud to state that this was the best camp of my life thanks to the Project. First of all, the apartment was fabulous for me. I found incredible that the cool water of Balaton is only a few steps far from our garden which had a dreamy view on Balaton. Adventure park, sailing, monuments and a thousand other stuff.”
Ferenc Katona, Balatonföldvár, July, 2017
“I liked the most the community in the camp. It was so good to meet with those people I had got to know in the previous year and to meet new ones as well. I think we became a good team in this ten days. It is said that summer means Balaton. And it is so true. Balaton creates a good atmosphere to the camp; even the stormy weather could not stop us from bathing.
I also liked the small group conversations… On the first day, our thoughts and ideas were collected and these ideas were discussed on the following days; we talked about them deeply. It was so interesting to learn about others opinions and views about these thoughts and ideas.”
Noémi Pap, Jánosi, August, 2017
The Foundation organized a Summer Camp for the forty scholarship holders of the Transcarpathia Talent Project in Balatonföldvár between 10th and 19th July, 2017. Five teachers came with the students from Transcarpathia. The goals of this Summer Camp were on one hand, educational and on the other hand, community building.
An important part of these goals was to understand and strengthen the students’ social and historical-traditional background. The students are members of not only their families, their home towns and Transcarpathia, but the Carpathian Basin’s Hungarian community as well. Therefore, it is important to help them to realize the significance of this multilevel relationship system. We hope that we may encourage and invite them to think about their social and local engagement from this angle.
The students had two hour long sessions every day in homogenous groups. The topics of the first five sessions were chosen by the group leaders. The last sessions provided a flexible framework to discuss questions and ideas suggested by the students. These questions and ideas were elected by the rules of democracy. The methods of the sessions were debate, discussion and drama games.
The groups also watched various short videos during these sessions in order to generate discussion by paying the students attention for various everyday questions and situations. The conducted discussions were always looking for an agreement and a common ground for these questions.
Drama games were also applied in order to increase the students’ emotional sensitivity, interpersonal communication and the feeling of belonging together, by making the individual and communal principles clear and generating a space of trust.
The sessions were organized in this way in the hope of helping to strengthen the students’ values which could bring closer their micro and macro contexts, the Transcarpathian communities and the Hungarian communities in the Carpathian Basin. Based on the students’ feedback, the camp leaders found that the sessions were successful. The students showed the picture of self-conscious and committed young women and men.
Balatonföldvár, July, 2017
Eszter Varga Takácsné
high school teacher