After spending some time thinking of our beliefs (and writing them down), we formed six groups to talk about what we thought Europe should believe in... not an easy task! Walking into the room I saw everyone thinking deeply on the subject, it's not an easy task to decide what Europe should believe in and in this process you encounter several questions such as what is Europe? Some people think that Europe is a matter of geography, in which case the countries that are not fully in European territory would not be European (and therefore, their people would not be Europeans either); other people, like me, believe Europe is about people and shared values, and so on.
Later in the day, we made a film in which everyone said their beliefs and it was amazing what a variety of thoughts we had, and the capacity of people to share their own personal knowledge. At the end we did the same with our "group" statement, but that comes later. We didn't only participate in the film-making but also created strategies to spread the film, taking responsibility for its distribution.
In the process of debate about Europe's beliefs, we came up with different ideas, from the idea of trust to the idea of young people. My group ended up deciding that "Europe should believe in its unity." Other groups experienced similar processes to us, or at least they presented ideas that we thought about for a moment and didn't choose! One of these ideas was to include the word "trust." Originally our group created a new word: POSTVIC (Personal, Open minded, Self-confident, Trust, Variety, Integration, Curiosity). Other groups presented the idea that "Europe should believe in people," and at the end this was the idea that the workshop agreed to have as a final statement:
Europe should believe in people... Because there are things only we can do.
Only we can be curious, open-minded and self-confident.
Only we can trust, and only we can smile.