Pre-story: during the "Discover, join and act!" festival some of the participants were interviewed about the seminar and impressions of some workshops they attended. Below and in the next articles you will see the interviews/Julia Myasyshcheva/


By Lovis Assmann

Interview with Mariya Stepanova, 16, student, Belarus

Why did you decide to come to this seminar?

- because i wanted to make new experiences and get new knowledge and also to meet people and improve my English.

Why particularly this seminar?

- because I also wanted to hear about experiences from volunteers from other countries.

So it was more for your personal advantage than for an advantage you might use in later life?

-yes

What information did you have about this seminar before you left for it?

- I knew that it would be a feedback seminar for YTNF-projects with a lot of people from different countries.

Now about the workshop today: first, what workshop were you in?

- I was in the workshop about stereotypes with Anna

Why did you choose this workshop?

- It was interesting for me because I know that a lot of people have stereotypes about my country Belarus and it was fun that some stereotypes are really believed by people and it was even more fun to tell them that they are not true...

So were you only curious about stereotypes about your country or were you also curious about stereotypes about
other countries?

-yes of course I also wanted to hear about stereotypes about other countries...

Alright.. What did you do in this workshop?

-first we talked about the definition of stereotypes, where they come from and how the develop, then we split into "national" groups and after some time each group presented two stereotypes about their country and two stereotypes about every other country that was represented.

So you had pretty much the feeling of being a full part of that workshop?

-Yes

What did the results of your discussions and presentations look like?

-We experienced that we have a lot of wrong things in mind when we think of different countries and we believe in them...

...Why?

- because they are stereotypes :-).. I can't really explain... Everybody around you believes in them so I believe in them too because I don't have any other information. It can be wrong but it can also be right in some cases as we discovered in the workshop.

But if somebody tells you something about a country and you consider this as a stereotype, do you believe it immediately or what do you do?

-no no I need a proof, I need to see this with my eyes before I believe it

So your results were that stereotypes cannot be believed until proved right, but still there are unproved stereotypes which are correct?

- yes quite like that

Ok... How did you draw this conclusion?

- after we collected all the stereotypes from the countries which were represented we had a big list of stereotypes below every country and then the people from the specific countries marked them right or wrong

Good... Resume: was this workshop useful for you?

-yes it was very interesting to hear about how stereotypes about one country can differ in different other countries which proved how wrong it is to just believe in them so it was very useful.

Thank You