Finally! It is Saturday and the last day of the Agora in Budapest has arrived! After three amazing days for the Health4Youth (H4Y) Project during the Agora – where it received unanimous support in front of the whole Agora and gained a big interest with its games during the AEGEE Fair, the time for the first H4Y workshop in Europe came!
Despite the late end of the last voting of Agora, almost fifteen people attended the workshop. For sure they did not regret it! The two cheerful hosts, Mayri Tiido and Matthijs Overhaal, had prepared a very fruitful workshop for them. First Matthijs asked the participants to introduce themselves and explain the reason they were there. Most of them were following a vegetarian lifestyle. As they admitted, being vegetarian was their way of following a healthier lifestyle and this thought was very surprising for us.
Could you ever imagine an AEGEE workshop without the brainstorming? Of course not! That is why Mayri, Project Manager of the H4Y Project, divided the participants into four groups and gave four keywords: habits, food, lifestyle and power of media. Each team had to answer the following questions about each keyword:
1) What are the hot topics / biggest concerns in Europe nowadays concerning your keyword?
2) How could the problems in this area influence your health?
3) Why is this topic of big importance?
4) How can you as an AEGEE member influence young people about health?
All teams gave their best and there was a very productive conversation about all four topics.
We did not stop there because we also had a game prepared. We asked the participants to write down how many cereals, juices, sauces, beverages and some other products they consumed in a day. Afterwards, we gave them a table with sugar contained in these products and asked them to calculate the total amount of the consuming sugar. Almost everyone was shocked when they realized that the total consuming amount of sugar was higher than the recommended amount.
The game was a big success and the participants suggested the Health4Youth team to publish such shocking data because it helps the young people to realise some wrong lifestyle decisions they make and helps them correct these decisions in near future.
Before the workshop ended, the Health4Youth team showed to the participants a part of a video of the British cook Jamie Oliver during the TED Prize (2010). TED is a nonprofit conference devoted to ideas worth spreading in the areas of technology, entertainment and design. In this video, the famous chef shows in a shocking way the huge amount of sugar which children consume only by drinking milk which they serve in elementary schools in USA.
The Agora has already finished, but the activity of the Health4Youth team has just started! Stay tuned because health matters!
Written by Arsenios Tselengidis, AEGEE-Thessaloniki