Wetskills Palestinian Territories 2022-
by Julia Kobylińska (HZ University of Applied Sciences)
Hi everyone! My name is Julia, and I am currently one of the participants of the Wetskills event in Palestine 2022. I would love to share this experience with you but let’s start with a few words about me. I was born in Poland, and I study Water Management in the Netherlands. I have left my family home and moved my life to the Netherlands to gain insightful knowledge in the field of water since I deeply care about the worldwide issues that we all are facing. I have always admired people who are specialists in their field, so I wanted to expand my knowledge in a range of water management. Due to all the mentioned above reasons, I got so excited about the great opportunity of participating in the Wetskills events and to already start resolving water-connected issues, the career I bind my future with. Furthermore, there is no better way to broaden your network, awaken your creativity and master teamwork than by working on real-life problems with an international team.
I expected to meet a lot of interesting people and made some lifelong friendships. However, I did not expect such an amazing team! The diversity in occupation/field, age, and origin are incredible. That was the exact aspect of Wetskills that I enjoyed the most from the first few seconds. During the introduction on the first day, it was noticeable that I will learn a lot and gain valuable experience from all sorts of fields like architecture, civil engineering and water management. Also surprising to me – fortunately working on your cases is not the only thing you do during the event. On the first day of Wetskills, we went to The Youth Village – Sharek Youth Forum, which is an educational, environmental, sports, and entertainment village established by Sharek Youth Forum west of Ramallah. After a short tour around this place and introducing ourselves, we had an amazing breakfast (I have to admit I fell in love with local cuisine).
Then we got to know more about our cases, we got divided into groups and listened to a presentation about the actual water-crisis situation in Palestine. Afterwards, it was time for a bit of competition as we played some team games. Happily, our reward turned out to be (yet again) incredible lunch. I enjoyed it with my group while talking to my case owner about the issue we have to solve. The next point required out-of-the-box and creative thinking as we were asked to describe the hidden meaning of images. To finish the day, we went for a short (due to the high temperatures) hike where we could admire the view.
Later we had the whole evening for ourselves. After watching the sunset from the rooftop of our accommodation (by the way, check out this view!) we decided to enjoy the nightlife in Ramallah. To conclude, the first day already exceeded my expectations and I can’t wait for the coming days 😊
