From 18 to 35 years old, coming from more than 80 different countries, women at Seliger were the perfect example of diversity, creativity and personal development.

In short, Seliger is an international camp situated in Russia, it amasses during 9 days 700 exceptional individuals from all over the world. I had the chance to attend this forum that gives you a unique chance to learn a lot about yourself, to create links with incredibly inspiring people full of will and talent with whom you lived for only 9 days, but that you will consider from now as your Seliger family. It is also an unique place where I discovered by living in a camp in the middle of the woods simple things of life, like how to make tea without drinkable water, to have a shower without proper showers, I even learned to eat with Japanese chopsticks and fought my fear of spiders! But besides the fun and the human experience that Seliger can bring to you, it also gives a real opportunity to create innovate and learn from rewarding topics.

Seliger aimed to encourage its participants by taking challenges and leading change in several fields, including the improvement of women’s conditions by making their voices heard through creating a panel discussion.. Also lectures about women rights and equality were imparted, how to make women’s living conditions better in a large scale and in an efficient way. For example, in World Café -that is a working group discussion in which we choose one of the member’s project to be submitted to the project competition- the winning project was: “Preventing Students of Human Trafficking in Indonesia». It aims to preclude this prevalent phenomenon in the country, especially concerning girls and children, and to change the current situation there.

Blonde, brunette, veiled and redheaded women; they mixed their cultures and ideas during the discussions, they were presenting their professional projects during the presentations, taking part in social entrepreneurship projects and sharing their experiences.

What was the outcome of gathering liberty-minded women of all the continents in one place? They became global women that are intercultural and can undertake international initiatives and run international projects, they gained communicating with the world, developed their network, cultivated great presentation skills, improved their personal development and learned how to build themselves.

Poem written by Asma Hamid from Algeria

This is our very second international guest post in the blog! Thank you

Picture taken from: http://thesunflowerpost.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/bosque-de-secuoyas.jpg?w=300