Summer School 2011: International Summer School “Eurointegration: Theory and Practice” at Sumy National Agrarian University
July, 25-31th, 2011, Sumy National Agrarian University welcomed the participants of the International Summer School “Eurointegration: Theory and Practice”.
Among the participants were: Sumy NAU students, representatives of Agrarian University – Plovdiv, Bulgaria, and of Warsaw Life Sciences University – SGGW, Poland. The project was co-financed by the Fund for Incentives of CASEE, the "ICA Regional Network for Central and South Eastern Europe”. The project coordinator is Oksana Zamora, PhD, senior teacher at the Foreign Economics Management and Eurointegration chair, international project coordinator of Sumy NAU. There were also two trainers engaged: Non-formal Education and European Integration Expert, Youth Peace Ambassador of Council of Europe in Ukraine, project manager of Sumy NGO “Center for European Initiatives” Julia Sakunova; and associate professor at the Foreign Economics Management and Eurointegration chair Tatyana Khvorost, PhD.
The distinctive feature of the event was an interesting combination of European interactive training technologies, national and cultural communication and theoretical informationl sessions on the Eurointegration topic. The leaders of the Bulgarian and Polish groups – Krasimir Aleksandrov and Agata Malak-Rawlikowska – provided exclusive lectures on the issues of EU membership experience of their native countries.
This summer school was a unique event on international level for Sumy NAU, where foreign students from the partner universities of Bulgaria and Poland participated. It allowed students to obtain theoretical knowledge in Eurointegration, to share youth life experiences with their colleagues from European countries which had recently entered EU. In addition they received practical skills in a number of useful spheres: teamwork, leadership, project design, intercultural communication, interactive training technologies implementation. The peak of the summer school programme was a role game elaborated by Julia Sakunova dedicated to the topic of opening new opportunities for the EU youth.
Students considered this event to be very valuable and useful. They discovered a wide range of possibilities to practice their English, to get new friends and contacts from abroad, to share experiences through social activities, to obtain theoretical knowledge and practical skills in the spheres which they’ll meet in their professional path. But the main achievement of the summer school is that students, as they mentioned, were strongly inspired to develop their own activities in future.