9th YOUTH competition: “I’ve been abroad... So who am I now?”
The winners of the 9th Erasmus+ competition have been chosen. Find out who they are and what stories they have to tell!
9. Erasmus + Competition „I’ve been abroad… So who am I now?“
The winners of the 9th Erasmus+ competition have been chosen. Find out who they are and what stories they have to tell!
The Competition
Many young volunteers think about who they were before their voluntary service and who they are now. That’s why the 9th Erasmus+ competition “Europeans involved” wanted to find out more about what volunteers experience and what changes them. We wanted to know how you felt while volunteering abroad and what you have learned that will be useful in the future. Many of you have chosen short stories, essays, reports, interviews and even poems to put your thoughts into words. Thank you for all the texts you wrote and for sharing your experiences with us and with the world!
The Winners
A total of 92 texts from all over the world were written exclusively for this competition. The jury had quite a hard time choosing only four winning texts, but they have made their decision: Get to know the winners and read their stories!
1st Place: Niklas Dangelmaier
Niklas participated in a European Voluntary Service at a sports school in the Czech Republic. Ever since moving there, he has been writing many blog posts on youthreporter.eu. In his competition entry, he writes that during his voluntary service he was looking for answers, but what he found were more questions. His voluntary service did not turn him into a different person, but it did change him. The jury especially enjoyed the figurative style of his writing. Congratulations!
Niklas Dangelmaier: „Starthilfe“
2nd Place: Sarah Siegert
Sarah, 20 years old, is originally from Potsdam. After graduating from high school, she participated in a voluntary service at a school for agricultural sciences in France. Even though by now she has left for Latvia, her competition entry is about her time in Normandy. She manages to surprise the readers, because despite her entry’s title she has never seen plantains nor baby turtles.
Sarah Siegert: „Kochbananen, Schildkröten-Babys und israelische Datteln…“
3rd Place: Katja Zhuk
Katja Zhuk, 27 years old, is from Belarus. In order to start her voluntary service, she moved from her home town to Berlin. Her competition entry compares the different stations of her life, for example going to school and volunteering, with all the trains arriving daily at Germany’s capital and the people she met during her voluntary service with passengers on German trains.
Katja Zhuk: "Züge des Lebens"
4th Place: Hanna Köhler
Hanna is 19 years old and during her voluntary service, she worked in a small town’s youth center in the south of Slovakia. After coming back home, she wrote her competition entry about how life in Slovakia has changed her. She learned to invest more in relationships than the usual 70 percent and experienced how important it is to be 100 percent herself.
Hanna Köhler: "Echt (70% ist nicht genug)"
Congratulations to all four of you and thank you to everyone who submitted a text! If you are curious to find out what others experienced while abroad, you can find all competition entries here Archiv