Begrüßungsworte

von Angelika König und Carmen Petterson-Gerke, Ulm
European Learning Partnership “European Women – Images of Interaction”
Transnational meeting in Barcelona 03.-05.06.2005

In Ulm our European Women Project group started 3 years ago:
in 2002 with a group of 20 women
in 2003 with a group of 15 women
and in 2004 with 15 women out of both former groups

From the very beginning the MAIN idea was: to meet women from other European countries with their
• problems and dreams
• social situations
• learning experiences in further education and
• possibilities of creating a wise, useful and practicable way of life.

But first of all we had to find ourselves in order to be a group and to accept each other and we noticed, we had to find out about
• our own problems and dreams
• our social situation
• our learning experiences in further education and
• our possibilities of creating a wise, useful and practicable way of life.
After this, we could do the next step: to open ourselves to the others.

But later on at the transnational meetings we realized our deficits of real communication in different languages. We had to find out non-verbal means to understand each other.
This situation has born a lot of ideas to interact on different levels of expression like:
the pottery workshop in Budapest
the photo exhibition “Women in Progress”
the skirts about “Role Models”
the puzzle “ We are all a part of ONE - and open to all sides”
the wooden “Palace of Women”
the painting workshop“ The colour Blue“
the felting workshop „Awakenings“
Some of these workshops integrated creative writing, others dancing, singing and fairy tales.
“Thanks” to the leaders of the international groups for canalizing their and our wishes.

These activities brought us very close together in terms of confidence, honesty and friendship. This emotional level in combination with our courses in languages, new technologies, politics and history founded our wishes and hopes for long-term effects in private and self-payed meetings.
Our idea and offer to you all is, to make it possible. We open our houses to welcome you.

And – by the way – in our opinion it would be a great way of saying THANK YOU to the European Union for setting the ball rolling.

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