I recently went on a youth exchange in Costinesti, Romania. This youth exchange was about young entrepreneurship. It helped us manage our emotions, build a business and work together in a team. This ERASMUS+ project is possibly the best project I’ve been to.
In this youth exchange there were 5 countries. Greece, Spain, Turkey, Italy and Romania. We were the host country. This project lasted 10 beautiful days where we were together for the same goal. To learn about entrepreneurship and team building.
About Paquet, the fictional company
Paquet, one of my projects, won the contest as the best company. Paquet was the product and Paquet LLC was the fictional company.
Here are the people that helped me achieve this dream.
I was helped by Lara, Gabriela, Aleyna, Sultan and Stefanos. Our team was composed of spanish, romanian, turkish and greek team members.
Our presentations
We kept our presentation simple and product focused. No fuss about how the entire company works. People are focused on the product, not the company.
That’s why our presentations were just 2 minutes long and talked about everything that needed to be said.
Our business plan
Our business was very thorough so the reader could understand as much as possible about Paquet, the company, and Paquet, the product.
About the contest
In the contest there were some very interesting and potentially successful. One of the entries were Food Match. An app that connects the consumer and individual sellers. This entry had the best presentation and, to be honest, the most potential.
Another interesting entry was Tradeed. An app that lets you trade skills. You learn about something by teaching something else. In my opinion it had the greatest marketing, with merch, commercials and others.
A great entry was also Cutie. “Cutie” is the romanian word for box. A very good word play. This entry was about delivering ingredients for making cocktails and other drinks at home. This entry had simply the best moto. “Mix up your nights” impressed everyone since it was simple, creative and overall the coolest.
Mercurius was a cool concept but flawed. It was targeted at teaching middle eastern countries english. The main consumers were people who already knew english, but wanted
Lions by day, lions by night
Days were filled with tasks and games and nights were filled with dance and music. We all managed to party as hard as we worked. I thought that was amazing. To see someone who was a party animal last night, make a very serious business presentation is quite amazing.
Cultural nights
The cultural nights were one of the best. From Spain to Italy, from Turkey to Greece, all nights were filled with great parties and presentations about culture, language and traditions.
We learned so much about each others countries and we realised how different we were yet so similar. Personally, the turkish culture night was my favourite, as we found out about traditional food, cool facts, insights into the country’s past and future and so much more. Turkey always had a special place in my heart either way. Oh, by the way, it seems it’s Turkiye and not Turkey anymore.
The romanian culture night was hosted on the 1st of December as it was our national day. At the same hotel where we were, was another youth exchange project. So we decided to unite and make the greatest culture night of all times. This cultural night took place in 2 different places and had multiple shows. We had lots of food, drinks and dances. Overall the biggest cultural night.
Secret Garden Talks
In the hotel there was a secret garden, an area where we could sit down and talk. In every talk I would put some ambient music to relax everybody after working on their tasks and companies. I made a playlist of all the songs that I played in the background.
More
This youth exchange was not just about making a business. This project helped us work in a team, control our emotions, understand certain concepts about entrepreneurship, volunteering and more.
In this project I learned how to be a better leader. I learned how distribute the work to everybody equally and also by their knowledge and skills.
I also learned more on the emotional side of things. I have learned that people come and go. But experiences, and the changes that they make in you stays. The departure and the last goodbyes were pretty rough emotionally.
I also aknowledged my obsession to always take responsability in everything. Now I am trying to slowly let this obsession go. If keep taking responsability in everything I am going to burn myself out.
On the more personal side of things, I learned that it’s ok to take time to think about everything that happens around you. Sometimes you need some time to process the things that are happening around you. If you don’t you are going to be left out confused and emotionally unstable.
I want to thank all the participants in this project that helped me grow more as a person. And also, I want to thank ODES Association for making this project possible.