I am Tagwaa EM. Babiker I am a Sudanese medical student in Italy, my interests are creative recycling and crafting. That is why I participated in the Erasmus + project about upcycling in Gandia – Spain in September 2023.
I got to work with an amazing team of young environmental activists from six countries using non-formal education. We learned about the different recycling, upcycling, and downcycling methods, we saw some examples of upcycling of plastic and other materials then we participated in different practical workshops for 3 days. we were also introduced to #precious_plastic a very promising and inspiring project for plastic upcycling.
During the time we spent together, we got to know each other, our backgrounds and cultures which we celebrated in the intercultural night where we shared typical food and music. We also shared our experiences on the themes of the project , particularly in the day before the workshops when we did a brainstorming and many debates and presentations of our ideas and our expectations
We had the closing ceremony where we showed everything we made for the public in Gandia, guiding them in a life workshop of making your natural cosmetics.
I returned from Gandia filled with hope, knowing that there are some creative ways of recycling and that there are youth like me who will try to implement those ideas in their local communities.
Thanks to this Erasmus project I have presented my idea of creating a lab workplace for precious plastic in my town in Italy. I have presented my project in an entrepreneurship program in my university hoping to gather a team of students from all faculties with different skills and backgrounds to find innovative solutions for plastic recycling.
Another impact of the Erasmus+ project on my life is that I will be presenting a workshop about using Tetra Paks which are challenging to recycle the workshop will be presented to the youth movement of Save the Children Italy in Ancona, I Will teach them how to use Tetra Paks to make simple furniture as we did in Gandia.