Breaking Bread... Or Spaghetti

It has been a week since students from different European countries arrived to the USA to study civic engagement. Today was the first day of speakers' sessions. So after delicious breakfast at university cafeteria we had pre-speaker session with our tutor Alisha. We tried to create the definition of "civic engagement" in four groups and then discussed the strengths of each variant. Then, in other groups we tried to specify the definitions and find examples for each level of civic engagement (neighborhood, city, country, EU, the world).

After lunch we had a speaker session with Terry Goodfellow. She lived in Amsterdam and worked at a non-profit organization for 12 years, so we was able to tell us about many activities aimed to solve social problems. We also had interactive part such as creating a list of words which can explain the civic engagement. It was very exciting!

The second speaker was Sylvie Dessay. She is originally from France, but now she is actively participates in organization called "Moms Demand Action". The main point of the lecture was that today, social media can unite people with similar interests and touching issues.

After our classes, many students decided to explore the nice city of Columbia and walk around the streets. After walking and pleasant conversations, we decided to cook some dishes of our cultures -today was Italian food, so we had homemade pasta! It was a very productive and interesting day. I think we become closer to each other, and tried to learn about our different cultures.