Monday 23 February 2009

The History of City Travel Review

The makings of City Travel Review began a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
We wanted to create projects whereby young people (18-30) would gain new skills that could be used in the real world. Members of the city travel review team were fed up working the norm 9-5 working routine. Being confined to meaningless tasks and being held back from their true potential. We found that we were not alone. We escaped and wanted to help others to. Members of the team all have been involved within various gap periods over a number of years. Our original idea still stands to create gap periods that incorporate culture, language training and enjoyable creative work learning experiences which they can carry this new found knowledge and practice into the future. Participants are given the opportunity to gain key responsibility positions, something that they may not be offered when gaining entry to a new job due to age, lack of experience, office politics, lack of trust, and other members of the team already being in charge of these key responsibilities. We give them the chance to fast track and bypass the bureaucracy often found in many companies. Participants that join our teams can be from all different backgrounds and nationalities which brings more colour and flavour to the projects. Groups are of all different sizes depending on the project; from 6 people, 12 people, 18 people to our maximum capacity of 40 people! Although we are not aware of other organisations doing what we do the closest experience that we can relate our projects to is the International programme 'Erasmus'. We find that many of our particpants that come on our programmes have already been a part of this well-known programme and some that gain entry to our programmes use it as a taster to a longer gap such as Erasmus. City Travel Review originally was based on this programme and a mixture of the 'Real World Project in Paris'.....where particpants lived together, learnt a new language and culture while creating a travel guide for young people visiting the city.

http://www.frommers.com/articles/1155.html

& http://www.mtv.com/ontv/dyn/realworld-season13/series.jhtml

Over the past programmes we have found that many particpants benefited from our projects in a whole range of different ways from improved language skills, cultural insights, new working ethics, skills and abilities not to mention great memories and friends. Past participants go on to great things and often use the experiences learnt in their new found positions. We like to keep in touch with as many past particpants as possible and hope to reuntite in the coming years.

Here is a nice video of an inspiration to the makings of the Berlin City Travel review projects.........Enjoy. It is about more than a piece of paper. Carpe diem!




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