The project Manage Your Own wallet held in Turkey allowed me to meet cool people from
Turkey, Finland, Hungary, Belgium, Germany and France. We spent a lovely week in Ankara
where we mostly held group works and brainstorming, role plays, presentations and other
informal learning methods. The basic aim of the project was to learn how to start and keep
budgeting as individuals and emphasise the importance of basic economic literacy. We’ve
gotten the chance to talk about the economy in our country, our traditions but also to present
our national cuisine to the participants, simultaneously while other countries presented
themselves during a Culture night. A field trip to Ankara showed us some important city
sights, such as Anıtkabir, Ankara castle and the historic district of Hamamonu.
As a person who finished a business-oriented high school and then graduated from
Marketing, I already acknowledged most of the topics discussed. However, my background
allowed me to actively participate in the project, as well as help other participants.
Presentations about topics like investing, crypto-currencies broadened my knowledge. I have
made many friendships with like-minded people. I thank Youth for Equality for allowing me
to participate in such a project, and I believe this is not the last one I’ll attend.
Petra Golecova
Spending one week in Ankara on the Manage Your Own Wallet project was definitely one of the best parts of my summer. I enjoyed it unbelievably. We gained together some new knowledge and enhance our financial literacy what I find nowadays very important. As my field of study is absolutely different from economics, lots of information was new for me, sometimes too difficult, but at least I had a good opportunity to get an insight into a little bit foreign topic for me.
But what I liked the most was the free time part of the project. I extremely enjoyed discovering Ankara and Pursaklar with my new made friends. We had lots of fun, laugh and of course we made amazing memories. I liked the trip day to Ankara where we could see the most interesting places in the city, but later we had visited even more on our own, e.g. really beautiful Gençlik Park with fountains, enjoyed rides on the go-carts and carousels, or just walked around the streets. I like getting to know other cultures, so before the project I had been mostly looking forward to the cultural evenings and I enjoyed them. We learnt about traditions in other countries, we tasted some typical food and found out very interesting facts about foreign countries.
Thanks to the project we even had an opportunity to visit Istanbul for a few days and I must say I love it. This was my first time in Türkiye but definitely not last.
I’m glad I had an opportunity to experience what I did. It was one of the best trips in my life and I hope I’ll stay in touch with amazing people I met.
