From March 27th to March 27th 52 students from Centria (Finland), DkIT (Ireland), ISPGAYA (Portugal), UL (Poland) and HTW Berlin (Germany) travelled to AP Antwerp (Belgium) for our StartIT project. They were joined by 12 lecturers from those schools and worked in international, interdisciplinary teams on app ideas and business plans. The main focus of the project was “Sustainability and the Green City”.
Reports from participants:
“StartIT’s very practical and multicultural approach to learning makes it an
unforgettable and unique experience I wouldn’t want to miss for anything. I have
acquired a lot of applicable knowledge, but it truly excelled at demonstrating how
important intercultural exchange and human connection are for creating something
special.
However, this barely does the experience justice. These were intense, enriching and
at times even difficult few days – and I am glad to have participated. Now, everything
I’ve written so far feels meaningful and will most likely stay with me for quite some
time. But there are certain things you learn from people, not from books. And I firmly
believe that the human interactions, inside and outside of the work on the project
itself, will have a much longer lasting impact. I’ve touched on that a few times.
However, those moments tend to feel small when they happen, which makes them
hard to grasp and notoriously hard to describe, which is why I would like to close with
an anecdote which highlights the human aspect:
On our very last night, a fellow student from Germany, one of our Finnish colleagues,
and I stayed up very late playing cards. We were reflecting somewhat jokingly what
we have actually learned so far. And then my Finnish friend lamented that he just
wished for a few more days. I quickly responded that it is always better to leave 5
minutes too early rather than 5 minutes too late. We all agreed on that and decided to
go to bed – yet somehow, we stayed up another hour. Our Finnish friend eventually
read some poetry to us that he wrote when he was younger. There was one phrase
that got stuck in my head: “Endless conversations with countless possibilities” (Ajijul
Hoque).
I like that quote. There were so many interesting people, so many challenging ideas –
yet so little time. And because our time in Antwerp wasn’t endless, the conversations
weren’t either. The possibilities, however, they seemed indeed countless.”
„Taking part in the StartIT project was a enriching and really unique experience
for me, because Students from 7 different countries were brought together to
combine our knowlage in IT and business, to work together on the theme of
Green City, so i learned alot about teamwork and other cultures. But actually,
this project was even about so much more, it showed me the potential we can
unleash when we combine and share our skills and work together towards a
common goal – a more sustainble and better future.“
What participants wrote on LinkedIn: