Liubov Shynder , IYMC Krzyżowa
I am writing this post a few days after the departure of the Polish-German-French youth group from Krzyzowa, which, inspired by the participants of this project, we called the project "Jazda!".
This slogan is a rarity among our projects lately. The names we use most often describe the content or form of the project in a direct way. That's why "Jazda!" was met with slight bewilderment on the part of my colleagues, but also with joy, after they got to know where the name came from, why exactly "Jazda".
That is why I also want to share this joy on the educator's blog.
The group of this project met in Krzyżowa for the second time this year. The previous online meeting took place in January, then there were several shorter meetings also online, and in May this year, the group met for a week-long programme in Marseille at the Camp des Milles, run by a partner organisation from France. It was then, at the first live meeting, that the need arose to choose a word in one of the participants' languages with which to easily evoke the attention of the whole group. At the same time, my fellow coordinating team members and I were thinking of a cleverer-sounding name than the previous one "We remember together to shape the future".
The winner was "Jazda!" with an exclamation mark - a word that evokes movement and attention. "Jazda!" quickly gained approval.
The word jazda in the PWN Polish language dictionary has the following definitions:
1. 'moving from place to place by various means of locomotion'.
2. "moving, advancing means of locomotion".
3. pot. "dynamically changing situation, full of sensations, surprising moments, often amusing".
Isn't that the perfect name for a project about the history of migration?
Exactly so...
Now that we have the issue of the name of the project clarified, which by the way is very valuable to me and has shown me anew the issue of adequate and attractive presentation and naming of valuable educational content and projects.
I am happy to return to what I felt the need to share by naming this entry Challenges and successes and challenges that I count as successes.
The project that just ended was a historical project by design and focused on the issue of migration through the experience of three places: the small village of Krzyżowa, where migration and the change of population from predominantly German to predominantly Polish with the change of borders after the Second World War is a unifying element for the inhabitants not only of the village, but also of the whole region; the small town of Friedland, where a camp for migrants, primarily Germans returning to Germany, was set up in 1946 and over the years has developed into the first stop in Germany for many people from all over the world, operating continuously for more than 70 years and hosting several hundred people in the migration process at any one time; and Camp des Milles, a camp which operated during the Nazi occupation in the south of France, forcibly holding people of Jewish origin from France and other countries.
In creating the programme and combining these three different stories and analysing them into a coherent educational plan, we knew as a leadership team that this programme would only gain greater value and relevance in relation to contemporary migration challenges and issues.
When initiating this partnership (we joke that the 'mothers' of this project are me and Anna-Louise Wessling, a staff member of the Friedland Museum), we did not suspect how close to us and among us the topic of migration would become and how it would evolve from a topic that was chosen as a way of connecting the three historical sites to a central theme.
Since our first partnership meeting, the situation on the Polish-Belarusian border has deteriorated drastically, a state of emergency has been imposed, the construction of a wall has begun, the military aggression of the Russian Federation on Ukrainian territories has forced several million people to seek asylum. The phenomenon of migration emerged in the public space and began to affect people who had no previous contact with it. In addition to the events at the political level, at the level of the group of people who applied to participate in our programme, it turned out that a large number of participants also had a migration experience, came from families with such an experience or were closely related to people in migration. Therefore, the first challenge, which I consider a success, is that when faced with the question of how to coherently combine three very different and abundant stories of three places, we chose to focus on one specific theme, topical and universal. By talking about this in the process of recruiting participants, highlighting the theme of migration as a guiding theme, we managed to gather a group of people interested in this topic, a group open to experiencing and working with their experiences.
Another challenge was to explore history in depth, but to stay grounded in reality and combine history with an understanding of the current situation we found during the project.
I consider it our first success in this field that we took on this challenge at all. In planning the different parts of the programme, and the programme as a whole, we focused on understanding the situation and events, the personal level in each story, the experiences of individuals and the social and political processes that influence people's migration.
By addressing the 'core', the purposes and reasons, the causes and the personal level, we were going out to a universal level, not strictly related to a specific story, but providing an opportunity to understand similar experiences in different situations and historical periods.
Another challenge was that a group of about 25 individuals became a real group of people building relationships, making friends, willing to spend time with each other and being open to each other. In a way, it is every group leader's dream to have a group process and a well-run meeting like this, but at the same time, on the part of the facilitators, requiring a much greater attentiveness and presence in the group that does not just stay on the level of substantive topics, but also opens up emotionally. This was very much felt during the meeting in Krzyżowa. The fact that the meeting took place during the summer holidays prompted us to give those attending plenty of time to themselves and we offered them to take responsibility for its arrangements. This meant that by getting to know each other better in their free time, planning activities together and involving other participants in the 'fun', during activities and meetings the group was able to enter a deeper level of relationships, conversations and discussions. By knowing each other better, the participants were less afraid to present their views, thoughts, doubts and feelings and reactions to unfair and violent situations, of which migration history is full of.
"Jazda!", about which I could and want to talk a lot more, I wanted to point out that there are a few participants in our group who can only take part in meetings held in the country where they are currently living, because they are in the process of waiting for new documents and decisions from the relevant authorities and, as non-EU nationals, cannot leave their countries of residence. This is a situation that has also had and will continue to have an impact on the project.
We are also a team that is convinced that history education is meant to serve a better understanding of the present day and greater civic responsibility, and to take place with attention to the participants and their experiences and emotions.
Luba Shynder
