Our organisation, SYTEV selected us – Maria Mancová and András Takács – to take part in the project called Agro-entrepreneurship Accelerator Training in Larnaca, Cyprus.
We started our journey on the 20th November in Larnaca, where we arrived at the night. From the Larnaca Airport we found the hotel easily, because our organiser, Angelos made a very detailed info-pack about everything. At the hotel they waited us and everything was prepared for our arriving.
The first day we started with lot of smart ways to know each other. This helped us later to work as a team. We had a lot of task, where we had our chance to show what we know about the topic. At the evening we had our first International night (yes, the 1st… we had more, because there were participants from 15 countries, so one night was not enough). We took a lot of Slovakian food and drink, what was very popular in this international group.
Everyday was started with an energiser to make the team concentrated – these programs made us laugh too! Then we had to make presentations and projects in small, 4-6 member groups. The people of the groups were always changing, so we had chance to know each participant and their knowledge about the topic. During the training we heard a lot of interesting and smart things about Agro-entrepreneurship, what made us motivated to start our business too! During one program we learned about amazing people in this kind of business, who don’t just earn money, but helps for the people, the country and for our planet too!
On the last day, when we had our knowledge extended by the previously tasks, we started to think about one real and innovative project, what we could start. This project had to be posted on kickstarter, in the case if we, as a young business starters don’t have enough money to begin make our idea real. (You can see our project here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MgiwSzMkuwNFEMGjOzSOoxy1g-ICp-rG/view?usp=drive_open ) This task was supposed to teach us the world’s real problems, and the solutions for them.
We spent one day on site visit in a BIO farm, next to Nicosia, called Riverland farm. There we saw greenhouses full of healthy vegetables, growing without pesticides. The owner of this organic farm teached us a lot of “how-to”s and hacks what we can use not just at home, but maybe in our future business too! After the greenhouse we visited the stable with lot of animal. This farm is inviting tourist too, who can eat all of these delicious Cypriot bio food. After the site visit we made a short trip to visit the capital of Cyprus, Nicosia.
Overall this course was very interesting and useful for every participant. We learned lot not just about Agriculture, but we took part in this amazing and big international group!
