Pobierz plik - Grundtvig

of Life. It was implemented by ZUTW for three
years (2006-2009) with partners including Ost-
West-Europäisches Frauen Netzwerk e.V – OWEN
(Berlin, Germany), ImPuls Forum für Gesundheit
und Prävention e.V. (Göttingen, Germany), Preili
Women’s Club (Preili, Latvia).
The project’s goal was to arouse and heighten
awareness as well as to enrich skills among women
at the centre of life. The partner organisations
therein tended to take advantage of the existing
female potential in times of changing social, economic
and political realities.
Aaron Antonovsky, a sociologist whose work
concerned the relationship between stress, health
and well-being, had inspired Brigitte Wörteler
from Berlin and Marianne Klues-Ketels from
Göttingen. They intended to look for good ways
of becoming healthy, a process referred to by Antonovsky
as Salutogenesis. He defined health very
broadly as a sense of satisfaction, self-expression,
creating social relations and resilience to stressors.
The project’s authors added the notion of ‘empowerment’:
confidence in one’s own capacities
and assuming responsibility for oneself.
Within the three years of the project, eight
meetings were held, with the last planned for early
July 2009. The meetings were held by several to
over a dozen representatives of the organisations
involved; as part of ZUTW works, they involved
many more students.
The initial meetings were aimed at acquainting
the participants and overcoming possible
prejudice. Such an atmosphere was conducive for
commencing activities relying on the participants’
close cooperation. The classes attended by the
project participants included making collages on
‘The World of Happy Women’ or allowing people
of a different nationality to handle their bodies as
part of shiatsu massage.
One of the conclusions of the meeting in Berlin
was that Our meeting has been successful because
people of different nationalities, different
cultural backgrounds and beliefs, speaking different
languages, can work together and achieve
good results.
The ways of learning about each other were
diverse: we talked about ourselves and various
topics during scheduled social meetings; we introduced
our spouses and children, staying in
our colleagues’ houses in Göttingen, Berlin and
on Viktoria Šmukste’s farm near Preili. After the
first meeting in Zielona Góra, Barbara (66) wrote:
When I looked at us and our colleagues, when
I talked to them and listened to them I thought
about them as people who have already achieved
much and still have plans and dreams, are curious
of the world and open to others. I believe that we
can learn a lot from one another, gaining more
skills in running our lives to profoundly enjoy its
essence.
The second meeting was held in Göttingen
and resulted in yet another reflection: following
the example of our previous meeting, Brigitte and
Marianne planned getting to know one another
better and integrating the group at the same
time. We would all discuss our Christian names:
whether we like them or not, what they mean,
how we use them, how our parents arrived at
these names etc. It was interesting and sometimes
funny. Next we would break into groups of shared
characteristics e.g. the colour of our eyes and we
would build hierarchic ranks according to height
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