A The Europe Challenge Participant Shares Their Experience at the Cambridge Regional Summit
16 Apr 2024
“Our MBP Library Presents Itself in the Famous Cambridge
Representatives of 55 libraries from all over Europe, including the Municipal Public Library from Opole, take part in the integration workshops started today /15.04./ in the famous British Cambridge.
The congress is organized as part of The Europe Challenge 2024 program, organized by the European Cultural Foundation, with the support of Fondazione Cariplo, The Scottish Library; Information Council and public funding by Arts Council England, to which our library has applied for accession and received an appropriate grant to participate in it.
– Our program is entitled “You will not learn this at school” and is aimed at secondary school students. We started it in February, and at the end of May we will finish it – says Patrycja Przybylska from MBP, co-author of the project. – We want young people to have access to reliable information about mental health because schools often lack it and the data show that the number of cases of children and young people increases from year to year. We want to show that the library can create a safe and free space for such topics – adds the Opole librarian.
Among the topics of this project, which will be presented to representatives of the whole of Europe are: “Immunity and self-reflection – what are and what are the effects of increasing mental resilience”, “Happiness – realistic optimism, gratitude? what do they have for goals and a sense of meaning?” or “Hello, success? —> what is success for you? How to build self-confidence?”.
Participants of the congress in Cambridge were divided into three research groups. Opole MBP in Opole together with 27 participates in training in the recently opened scientific hub of the University of Cambridge. The Opole team consists of two people: in addition to librarian Patrycja Przybylska, there is also a representative of the local community participating in the project, third-year psychology student at the University of Opole Joanna Kocoń. In the first block of occupation that has just begun, Opole women will meet with teams from 10 countries: Great Britain, Spain, Belgium, Sweden, France, Portugal, Germany, the Netherlands and Ireland.
The training will end tomorrow, and the final and summary of this extremely important European project is scheduled for the last weekend of September in Amsterdam.”
This is an English translation of the original article by Municipal Public Library in Opole.
